Laila's Birthday

Born and raised in a refugee camp on the Gaza Strip, self-taught filmmaker Rashid Masharawi draws from the daily absurdities of Palestinian life under occupation in Laila's Birthday.

Set in Ramallah, the focus is a day in the life of Abu Laila, a proud, well-dressed but unemployed judge forced to work as a taxi driver. He goes about trying to find a birthday cake for his young daughter—a routine transaction but not when dealing with pointless checkpoints, hovering helicopters, and passengers wielding AK-47s. As the New York Times noted, it's "a fleet, dark urban comedy that registers outrage in glancing jabs of absurdist observation." (71 mins., video)

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