A remarkable entry into the body of film work about the Middle East, Private takes us inside the soul of an occupation, when the West Bank home of a Palestinian professor is caught in the crossfire between the two sides. Based on a true story, it looks at how a comfortable, well-educated middle-class family's home is pegged as a strategic location and invaded by an Israeli army unit led by the paranoid Ofer (his own men are as afraid of him as the family he has commandeered). Mohammed, an English professor and the family's patriarch, obstinately refuses to leave, arguing to his wife Samia, “Being a refugee is not being,” while Samia simply wants to move her children to a safer place. Amidst the chaos, fear, intimidation, and harassment, the family, trapped in a no-win political situation, tries to cope. It is too much for the older children who, rendered powerless in their own home, try to take matters into their own hands. With no specific sense of time but a clear delineation of power, this raw and emotionally gripping film is a semi-allegory about any war zone where there is an impassible gap between the occupied and occupier.