‘Happy Holidays’ Review: A Cleverly Structured Palestinian Drama Explores Constriction and Complicity in Israeli Society

When Rami (Toufic Danial), one of the protagonists of Scandar Copti’s cleverly structured drama Happy Holidays, learns that his girlfriend Shirley (Shani Dahari) is pregnant, panic sets in. He is Palestinian and she is Israeli. He fears the reality of raising a child in a country where not even their relationship can be public. Rami asks Shirley to consider an abortion and she refuses. 

Their relationship contains the first of several interlocking tensions observed in Happy Holidays, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in the Orrizonti sidebar. The movie follows Rami, Shirley and members of both their families as they navigate life in Israel. Copti, a Palestinian filmmaker who co-directed the Oscar-nominated Ajami with Israeli helmer Yaron Shani, trains his gaze on the subtle dynamics at play when people live in a heavily militarized and divided nation. How do interpersonal connections echo or question the will of the state? How can national forces reshape, or even fracture, relationships? And how do women suffer what are often patriarchal constraints?

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Copti wraps these cerebral questions within the absorbing turns of a high-stakes drama. The interconnected structure lays the ground for a gripping mystery attentive viewers will be eager to solve. Happy Holidays begins formally with Rami and Shirley, but each chapter (the film is divided into four) reveals new complications and challenges faced by their families. Copti pulls committed performances from his cast of non-professional actors, who ground the feature with their sobering portrayals of Jewish Israelis and mostly Palestinian Christians grappling with existential questions. For these reasons, should the picture get U.S. distribution, it will likely find its audience. 

Rami and Shirley can’t agree on what to do with the baby, which begins to rift their relationships. Anonymous threats eventually split them. Rami thinks Shirley’s family is behind the vague warnings he’s been receiving, while Shirley believes Rami has sent goons to coerce her. The actual source of the warnings is one of the mystery threads in Happy Holidays, which does a solid job of showing the dangerous reality of Rami and Shirley’s union. More backstory about how the couple began dating would have been welcome, especially since a significant portion of the film hinges on the taboo nature of their relationship. 

While Rami deals with the fallout of his love life, his sister Fifi (Manar Shehab) manages her own secrets. After a night out, she ends up in a car accident (depicted in the opening scene) that lands her in the hospital. The ER visit sends ripples through her family, some of whose members discover something about Fifi’s sexual history that she’d prefer to keep hidden. Copti, who also wrote the screenplay, uses Fifi’s story to reveal the broader issues tackled here. The women in Happy Holidays are often the ones most restricted by society. Fifi’s failed negotiations with the medical staff at a hospital to keep her files private become a crucial part of the narrative engine. 

Other significant characters include Fifi’s lover Walid (Raed Burbara), whose interest in Fifi and seriousness about courtship seem to hinge on a misguided and vague notion of purity. There’s also Fifi’s mother Hanah (Walaa Aoun), who is planning a wedding for Fifi’s sister Leila (Sophie Awaada), in the midst of the family’s financial crisis. (An earlier story reveals how shady accounting plunged this upper-middle class family into precarity.) Happy Holidays investigates Shirley’s family as well, starting with her sister Miri (Merav Mamorsky). While trying to influence Shirley’s decisions regarding pregnancy, Miri grapples with her own daughter’s sudden depression. 

As Copti parses these family issues, he observes daily life in Haifa, where the film is set. Scenes of Fifi at her part-time job as an elementary school teacher’s assistant reveal how Israeli education reinforces anti-Arab sentiments and the necessity of a powerful military. Children write cards to soldiers and are taught that their safety depends on this omnipresent armed force. These ideas calcify into a national identity that is then deployed to create further division. Differences become a tool to stoke fear. Copti shows all of these sequences — including moments of ethical reckoning — with a candid and forthright gaze. Through its hyperlinked stories, Happy Holidays offers a tangible example of interdependence, a reminder that no one is free until everyone is free.