The acclaimed Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman has often been compared to Buster Keaton and Jacques Tati. Like them, he stars in his own movie, playing a droll version of “himself,” a Palestinian filmmaker who travels to Paris and New York in search of funding for his new movie, which doesn’t measure up to the financiers’ stereotypes of what a Palestinian movie is supposed to be. With his straw hat and sad eyes, he’s a silent observer who views with melancholy bemusement the absurdities of a high-security world. Shoppers in a New York supermarket come heavily armed with assault rifles and pistols, and Parisian ambulance drivers serve the homeless elegant two-course meals as if they were dining at Maxim’s. From the hilarious opening when an Orthodox priest can’t get the doors to his church open, It Must Be Heaven unfolds in a series of pointed, poignant comic vignettes.

Winner: FIPRESCI Prize, Cannes

In competition for the FIPRESCI Prize