A House in Jerusalem (review) – a past and present rooted in intergenerational trauma and oppression

To separate Alayan’s film from the horrific events now at play is impossible; as a result, it carries an urgency that may not have been as clear at its 2023 premiere. A House in Jerusalem is showing in selected cinemas from May 31.

When we suffer a traumatic event, we leave a piece of ourselves behind, an echo of who we were at the exact moment that event unfolded. We are never the same, nor does that traumatic event ever leave us, but over time, we learn to deal with it as best we can. But that echo of ourselves left at the scene remains, re-living the event repeatedly. Palestinian director Muayad Alayan weaves this reality into a story that, on the face of it, appears to be a ghost story aimed at younger audiences but is, in fact, a discussion on the lasting damage of trauma, forced relocation and the stripping of a whole people’s right to exist.

At a time when millions of Palestinian homes are destroyed, communities are separated, and families are ripped apart, A House in Jerusalem takes on a new importance. Muayad Alayan’s film premiered at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in 2023 when tensions were high, but terrorism and war had not yet played their deadly hand in a 100-year-old conflict. But now, as Gaza lays in rubble, and 35,000 people, including around 8,000 children, lay dead, the horrors and traumas of past conflict and oppression going back to the Arab–Israeli War of 1948 have once again risen to the surface only to be multiplied by the falling bombs of modern warfare and a global arms trade built on the blood of those with the least power.

As A House in Jerusalem opens, Twelve-year-old Rebecca (Miley Locke) has just arrived in Jerusalem with her father, Michael (Johnny Harris). Both are still struggling with the loss of their mum and wife in a car accident months before, and Michael is looking for an escape within the ancient walls of Jerusalem in an old mansion he inherited following the death of his father. But for Rebecca, the move feels like they are running from her mother’s memory, a memory she clings to through a dress a mum used to wear and the need to set the table for three each time they eat.

On arrival, Rebecca finds a small old well in the garden, and as she stares into its watery depths, it’s as if the well holds a hundred years of history. Rebecca immediately feels like the house has secrets cemented into the brick and stone, with each room full of the ghosts of a past she doesn’t yet understand, but when she finds an old doll in the well and fishes it out, a gateway to the past opens through the appearance of a young Palestinian girl, Rasha (Sheherazade Makhoul Farrell). This spectral being appears stuck in 1948 at the exact moment the Israeli state took her house.

A House in Jerusalem initially carries the spooky chills of a classic M.R James novel, as the house slowly gives up its secrets and Rebecca’s dad struggles to understand his daughter’s behaviour, seeking psychiatric advice from a doctor, who will soon become a new lover. But as these secrets float to the surface, Alayan upends our expectations, making his ghost story a discussion of the injustices of a 100-year war with no end.

There are weaknesses, from an at times clunky screenplay that never allows Johnny Harris’ talent to shine to performances from its younger cast that are occasionally stilted. But there is also a beautiful performance from Souad Faress, which elevates the film to new heights when combined with Alayan’s urgent exploration of a past and a present rooted in intergenerational trauma and oppression.

To separate Alayan’s film from the horrific events now at play is impossible; as a result, it carries an urgency that may not have been as clear at its 2023 premiere. A House in Jerusalem is not only about the ghosts of the past; it’s about the ghosts created every day in the present through the state-sanctioned oppression of people forced into ever smaller ghettos to survive. It’s about how trauma lives for a lifetime and is passed to new generations, leaving a mark that can never be easily scrubbed away.