Palestine Comedy Club

Writer: Alaa Shehada, Charlotte Knowles

Director: Alaa Aliabdallah

The documentary Palestine Comedy Club follows a small group of stand-up comics. They get together for a daring venture: to create a comedy show and tour it round Palestine. It might feel like an impossible task, finding comedy in the darkest of times. Writer and performer, Alaa Shehada, admits: “When we started this project, we had no idea of where it would take us.” Palestinians have no control over their daily lives, he continues, so they must create comedy by observing and watching life going on around them.

One of the most most fascinating about the film is what emerges about the very different cultural groups within Palestine: “As a country, we don’t know each others that well,” says Shehada, himself from Jenin. There’s a lovely scene early on where Shehada sits in the garden of his mother, a woman with a ready laugh. She teases her son: she makes comedy for free – he does it for money. It all seems a place of timeless peace. But the events of October 2023 will shatter that.

The PCC’s first stop is Ramallah, its people living under occupation. Traditional theatre work is safe compared to stand-up, they reckon. How will the locals react to their first experience of it? But their nice ensemble work of songs and dance wins them over. Raed is from very conservative Hebron. Will certain jokes have to be dropped to avoid offence? British co-founder and director Sam Beales is clear about the need to be brave. Free-spirited actor and musician Ebaa – ‘”she’s loud,” says Shehada – is from the Golan Heights. Here the cultural mix is very different, with its large Druze population and Ebba herself a mixture of Syrian, Palestinian and Arab. She gets nervous in Nablus being approached by a woman in a hijab. To her delight, the woman wants to shake her hand.

Diane Sweity, a natural comedian, is a mother figure to the group. Hebron, where she’s from, is on the sea. Audiences prick up their ears. They all know Hebron is inland, not far from Jerusalem. Yes, she insists, talking about looking out from her balcony on this sea, before eventually revealing Hebron is a sea of discarded white goods, refrigerators and washing machines.

Young artist, Khalil Al-Batran, is another natural. You feel he’ll go far.

The one place on their tour that’s going to be particularly tricky is beautiful Haifa on the coast. For most of the group, it’s a place of danger, with police routinely arresting people in the streets. They get round it by pretending to be a bunch of Europeans enjoying a tour of the Holy Land, kitted out in nice clothes and showy sunglasses. But it’s more than this. Four of the six performers are from the West Bank. You’re not allowed to leave the West Bank without special Israeli permission. You need a biometric card, but even when you get one, permission can be refused. Crossing a checkpoint is a major obstacle. All their plans could be wrecked if they’re detained. Established Hanna Shammas is ok as he has an Israeli passport. He devises a very funny set which consists of him apologising for everything, including being from Haifa. Audiences love it.

And that’s the fascinating thing about this film. Organising a tour is far from a matter of logistics and bookings. We follow the group round in their mini-van and most of us will be amazed not just at the beauty of the changing landscape but what we see of sophisticated, fully functioning Palestinian cities.

Gaza is the one place they can’t go to. It feels like we’re two different countries, one of them says. Unbelievably, there are artists, including comics, who still thrive in Gaza. But the PCC can’t get in.

Everything changes with the war on Gaza in 2023. Shehada’s Jenin suffers devastating bombings, his Freedom Theatre destroyed. But the spirit of resistance is still alive, he maintains. Sweity’s Fridge Theatre for kids closes – it’s too dangerous for them to come. Does the PCC stay or leave their homeland? Shehada moves to Amsterdam and promotes the Comedy Club in the UK. The final scenes show the group meeting on zoom, still laughing.

It’s an intriguing film, perhaps a bit short on laughs – we only see Shehada doing his stuff at the Pleasance at the end and get a glimpse of what his talent might be. But it’s an important film nonetheless.

Palestine Comedy Club is released in UK cinemas on 27 February.