A film of contrasts, shot against the dazzling sun and moody shadows of Galilee, Michel Khleifi's first feature depicts an impossible situation in the occupied West Bank: a Palestinian wedding, which traditionally lasts way into the night, in a village that is under a sundown curfew. The venerable mukhtar (Ali M. El Akili in a quietly stunning performance), whose son is to be married, takes his case to the Israeli military commander; the commander demands an invitation to the wedding, and in his person the occupation hangs over the festivities like a dark angel. Khleifi-who was born in Nazareth of Christian Arab parents, and now lives in Brussels-turns the winding walkways of the village into a setting for an elliptical narrative whose movement, based on flash-forwards, is a grapevine of time and tradition. He captures the wedding in cubist fashion-from every angle-so that it is an anthropologically fascinating and complexly political event, and also an intensely personal one. The bride and groom, suffering under the weight of centuries of tradition, are unable to produce the blood-stained sheet the guests are waiting for while tensions mount outside. Ultimately, this is a surprising and daring portrait of patriarchy as a chain of impotence, rendered by father to son, and oppressor to oppressed.