'Miral' - Official Trailer
Miral is a 2010 biographical political film directed by Julian Schnabel. The screenplay was written by Rula Jebreal, based on her novel. The film was released on 3 September at the 2010 Venice Film Festival and on 15 September 2010 in France. The film is set for release on 3 December 2010 in the United Kingdom, and on 25 March 2011 in the United States. Miral was initially rated R by the MPAA for "some violent content including a sexual assault." Later, however, it was reclassified to PG-13 for "thematic material, and some violent content including a sexual assault" after an appeal of the R rating by the Weinstein Company. On April 4, 2011, days after the film's US release, Juliano Merr-Khamis, an actor and peace activist who plays Seikh Saabah in the film, was shot to death in his car outside a theatre he had established in a Palestinian refugee camp. A chronicle of Hind Husseini's effort to establish an orphanage in Jerusalem after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the Deir Yassin Massacre, and the establishment of the state of Israel. Jerusalem, 1948. On her way to work, Hind Husseini (Hiam Abbass) comes across 55 orphaned children in the street. She takes them home to give them food and shelter. Within six months, 55 had grown to almost 2,000, and the Dar Al-Tifel Institute was born. In 1978, at the age of 7, Miral (Freida Pinto) was sent to the Institute by her father following her mother's death. Brought up safely inside the Institute's walls, she is naïve to the troubles that surround her. Then, in 1988, at the age of 17, she is assigned to teach at a refugee camp where she is awakened to the reality of the Palestinian refugees. When she falls for Hani, a militant, she finds herself torn between the First Intifada of her people and Mama Hind's belief that education is the road to peace. The Palestinian girl is author Rula Jebreal. Her novel on which the movie is based is a strongly autobiographical account of her youth in West Bank. She's torn between the injustice she sees at the hands of the Israeli army during the first Intifada and a desire for peace. Schnabel revealed that the project had relevance for his own family history, figuring that he was a pretty good person to tell the other side of the story, given his background, as an American Jewish person whose mother was president, in 1948, of the Brooklyn chapter of Hadassah the Women's Zionist Organisation of America.