Set in the hills of the West Bank, The Teacher, written and directed by British-Palestinian filmmaker Farah Nabulsi, tells the riveting story of Bassem (Saleh Bakri), a Palestinian high school English teacher struggling to inspire his students under the pall of Israel's occupation.

What’s it all for—the studying, the scholarship—if only to see armed settlers burn down your village olive trees and an Israeli government demolish your family home to make way for another illegal settlement? To the Palestinian teen who speaks in despair, as though old and tired with little for which to live, the middle-aged Bassem tells his student to return to his books to “regain control” in pursuit of an education that holds hope for a better life.

Although the film is Bassem’s journey of self-blame, newfound love, and quiet yet determined resistance, we also see events through the eyes of his prized student Adam (Muhammed Abed Elrahman), who becomes Bassem’s surrogate son replacing the one Bassem lost, the one we meet only through scenes that take us back in time.

Now—during the U.S.-armed Israeli genocide in Gaza and emboldened settler movement ripping through the West Bank—it is hard to imagine Nabulsi entering the Israeli-controlled West Bank to film The Teacher.

Blessed with looks and smarts, the surrogate son Adam pours over his books at a desk in the dirt outside overlooking the village destined for erasure. His home is gone. The tractor left only slabs of cement under which Adam recovers a desk, a couch, and a pair of binoculars that afford him advance notice of a looming threat or gut punch.

One measure of a good movie is whether you care about the characters or feel compelled to watch them, regardless of whether you agree with their choices or roles in the film, regardless of whether the character is a teacher invested in his students or a cunning Israeli intelligence officer who knows exactly which emotional button to push. For character development—raw, textured—The Teacher scores 10 out of 10, not only because Bassem is heroic, protective, and ultimately selfless but because both he and Adam are tested in ways most of us never will be challenged, leaving us wondering what we would choose if we lived under occupation—the scorched land of nighttime raids and vigilante violence, where our futures are not our own, where the fork in the road between self-defense and vengeance sometimes merges and where the greater good beckons us to hush creeping doubts. Would we remember The Teacher’s words: “Revenge eats away at you and destroys from the inside”?

Reviewers from legacy media—The New York Times, the LA Times—criticize the movie for having too many subplots. “But a teacher-student bonding narrative, a legal procedure, a family tragedy, a romance, and a kidnapping thriller are a lot to hang on one character,” writes NYT reviewer Ben Kenigsberg. “Nabulsi, unfortunately, muddles the story with multiple subplots, some inelegant acting, and contrived English-language dialogue,” writes the LAT’s Carlos Aguilar.

Did these movie critics see the same film this reviewer saw?

Such undeserved criticism suggests the writers are imposing their detached notion of reality on a drama that is all too real. The critics’ desire for a less complicated storyline with more refined dialogue suggests colonization of the art form rather than........

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