{ "id": "epfmb50pgb", "slug": "the-time-that-remains", "title": "The Time That Remains (الزمن الباقي)", "updated": "2026-11-01", "topic_path": [ { "id": "culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture" }, { "id": "culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films", "label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.war-historical", "label": "War and historical films (individual works)", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.war-historical" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.war-historical.historical-dramas-and-epics", "label": "Historical dramas and epics", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.war-historical.historical-dramas-and-epics" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.war-historical.historical-dramas-and-epics.alpha-m-to-z", "label": "Titles M to Z", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.war-historical.historical-dramas-and-epics.alpha-m-to-z" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.war-historical.historical-dramas-and-epics.alpha-m-to-z.alpha-sc-to-z", "label": "Titles Sc to Z", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.war-historical.historical-dramas-and-epics.alpha-m-to-z.alpha-sc-to-z" } ], "geo": [ { "id": "geo.mena.t2001.culture.performance.screen", "label": "Middle East and North Africa · 2001 to 2020: Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.mena.t2001.culture.performance.screen", "path": [ { "id": "geo.mena", "label": "Middle East and North Africa", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.mena" }, { "id": "geo.mena.t2001", "label": "Middle East and North Africa · 2001 to 2020", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.mena.t2001" }, { "id": "geo.mena.t2001.culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.mena.t2001.culture" }, { "id": "geo.mena.t2001.culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.mena.t2001.culture.performance" }, { "id": "geo.mena.t2001.culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.mena.t2001.culture.performance.screen" } ] } ], "excerpt": "The Time That Remains (الزمن الباقي) is Elia Suleiman's 2009 semi-autobiographical Palestinian drama in four episodes, 1948 to the present, based on his father's diaries and mother's letters; a Cannes Palme d'Or nominee and third in his Nazareth trilogy.", "snippet": "The Time That Remains (الزمن الباقي) is Elia Suleiman's 2009 semi-autobiographical Palestinian drama in four episodes, 1948 to the present, based on his father's diaries and mother's letters; a Cannes Palme d'Or nominee and third in his Nazareth trilogy.", "node": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.war-historical.historical-dramas-and-epics.alpha-m-to-z.alpha-sc-to-z", "markdown": "# The Time That Remains (الزمن الباقي)\n\n**The Time That Remains** (الزمن الباقي) is a 2009 semi-autobiographical drama film written, directed by, and starring the Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman, structured in four episodes that follow his family in Nazareth from the 1948 war to the present day. The film draws on his father Fuad's personal diaries, beginning when Fuad was a resistance fighter in 1948, and on his mother's letters to relatives who were forced to leave the country. It portrays the daily life of [Palestinians](https://www.edgepedia.org/palestinians) who remained in the land that became Israel and were labeled \"Arab-Israelis,\" living as a minority in their own homeland.[1](https://www.artemisproductions.com/en/films/THE_TIME_THAT_REMAINS)\n\n| Key fact | Detail |\n|---|---|\n| Director, writer, star | Elia Suleiman, born in Nazareth in 1960; he also plays the adult Elia[1](https://www.artemisproductions.com/en/films/THE_TIME_THAT_REMAINS) • [2](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/may/30/time-that-remains-film-review) |\n| Structure | Four historic episodes spanning 1948 to recent times, built around one Nazareth family[3](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/108459/en/newsdetail/377893/) |\n| Source material | The father's diaries of his accounts as a resistance fighter in 1948, and the mother's letters to exiled family members[1](https://www.artemisproductions.com/en/films/THE_TIME_THAT_REMAINS) |\n| Runtime | Listed as 105 minutes by the production company Artemis and as 109 minutes by Filmitalia, the Sharjah Art Foundation, and the Philadelphia Film Society[1](https://www.artemisproductions.com/en/films/THE_TIME_THAT_REMAINS) • [4](https://filmitalia.org/en/film/53731/) • [5](https://www.sharjahart.org/ar/event/details/the-time-that-remains-2009-ar) |\n| Languages and countries | Arabic, Hebrew, and English; a France, Belgium, Italy, United Kingdom co-production[5](https://www.sharjahart.org/ar/event/details/the-time-that-remains-2009-ar) |\n| Cannes 2009 | Competed for the Palme d'Or in the official selection[6](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1037163/awards/) • [3](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/108459/en/newsdetail/377893/) |\n| Principal awards | Best Director and the ACCA Jury Prize at Mar del Plata 2009; Jury Grand Prize at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards 2009; Audience Award and Silver Alhambra for Best Director at Granada's Cines del Sur 2010[6](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1037163/awards/) |\n\n## Spoilers\n\n### Story and structure\n\nThe film opens in the present with a taxi leaving Lydda airport carrying a mysterious passenger, seen only as a silhouette behind an Israeli driver. A storm breaks out, the radio cuts out, and the journey ends abruptly; the film then presents further situations, each ending with a similar disruption of time and space.[7](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/song-remains-same-time-that-remains)\n\nThe first episode is set in 1948, when the Haganah, which would become the core of the Israeli army, occupies Nazareth. Fuad Suleiman's girlfriend is forced to flee Palestine while Fuad stays behind to fight; he is arrested and tortured. When he reappears in Nazareth at the end of the 1960s, he is married to a different woman and has a son, Elia, who is almost ten. The film follows the family and their neighbors under a regime of extreme monotony: one neighbor tries to think logically while completely intoxicated, another repeatedly attempts suicide and is saved by Fuad and others, and anyone who tries to leave Nazareth meets obstacles that are themselves monotonous.[7](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/song-remains-same-time-that-remains)\n\nThe Guardian's Philip French described further episodes: the young Elia is taken aside at school, first for telling other children that the Americans are colonists and later for calling them imperialists, while an Arab choir sings patriotic Israeli songs; his mother keeps up a correspondence with exiled family in Jordan whom she will never see; and Fuad, a gunsmith whose lathe has been used to make guns for the rebels, is arrested on suspicion of gun running despite quietly heroic acts such as rescuing an injured Israeli soldier trapped under a truckload of explosives. The adult Elia is warned he must leave the country for a while or face arrest. The film closes with long takes, including a final sequence of odd incidents at an accident and emergency unit.[2](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/may/30/time-that-remains-film-review)\n\n**Silence as language.** Suleiman never speaks a word across the film, retaining what French called an expressive Tati- or Keaton-like silence. Suleiman himself explained the choice to the press agency AFP: appearing silently in the film is a kind of language replacing rhetoric, a substitute for the storyteller who holds the power of influence.[2](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/may/30/time-that-remains-film-review) • [8](https://www.albayan.ae/our-homes/2009-07-12-1.452552) The writer Adania Shibli, in a *Sight and Sound* essay, read the film as dealing with what remains of a time and of a place, his homeland Palestine, and noted that music plays a vital role even where speech is as futile as Chaplin's first spoken words in *Modern Times*.[7](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/song-remains-same-time-that-remains)\n\n## Production\n\nThe film had a troubled production history. In 2007, with production only weeks away, the project's original financing collapsed at the last minute. Suleiman spent the following months trying to raise the necessary money before salvation came from the London-based Saudi entrepreneur and film enthusiast Hani Farsi, together with the French sales company Wild Bunch.[9](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/interviews/time-that-remains-elia-suleiman)\n\nProduction companies included The Film and Nazira Films as producers, with Artémis Productions, France 3 Cinéma, BIM Distribuzione, Wild Bunch, and the Belgian broadcaster RTBF as co-producers, supported by partners including Eurimages, the CNC, Canal+, and [MBC Group](https://www.edgepedia.org/mbc-group).[1](https://www.artemisproductions.com/en/films/THE_TIME_THAT_REMAINS) Marc-André Batigne was the director of photography, Véronique Lange the picture editor, and Sharif Waked the production designer.[1](https://www.artemisproductions.com/en/films/THE_TIME_THAT_REMAINS) The cast includes Saleh Bakri as Fuad, Leila Muammar as Thuraya, Yasmine Haj as Nadia, Menashe Noy as a taxi driver, and Ali Suleiman as a policeman.[1](https://www.artemisproductions.com/en/films/THE_TIME_THAT_REMAINS)\n\nThe first theatrical screening took place in Ramallah, chosen by Suleiman himself, before a large audience at the Kasaba theater; the film had been nominated for the [Palme d'Or](https://www.edgepedia.org/palme-dor) at Cannes that year.[8](https://www.albayan.ae/our-homes/2009-07-12-1.452552) Distribution followed through Le Pacte in France and Cinéart in the Benelux countries from 12 August 2009, BIM Distribuzione in Italy in 2010, and IFC Films in the United States in 2011.[1](https://www.artemisproductions.com/en/films/THE_TIME_THAT_REMAINS) • [10](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1037163/companycredits/)\n\n## Reception and place in Suleiman's work\n\nAt Cannes 2009 the film competed for the Palme d'Or without winning a competition prize, a result that prompted several Western critics and journalists to ask why the film and its director had been left without an award from the official competition of the 62nd festival.[6](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1037163/awards/) • [11](https://www.cinematechhaddad.com/Cinematech/WICinema/WIC_10035.HTM) Elsewhere it accumulated honors: five wins and seven nominations in total, including Best Director at [Mar del Plata](https://www.edgepedia.org/mar-del-plata), the Jury Grand Prize at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, and, in 2010, the Audience Award and a Silver Alhambra for Best Director at the Granada Film Festival Cines del Sur.[6](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1037163/awards/) The film later placed 21st in a critics' poll of the best 100 films in Arab cinema.[12](https://elcinema.com/work/1732266/)\n\n**A trilogy completed.** *The Time That Remains* is the third in a loose trilogy of features about the Israeli state and the Palestinian people, following *Chronicle of a Disappearance* (1996) and *Divine Intervention* (2002), the latter a winner of the jury prize at Cannes.[13](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/may/27/the-time-that-remains-film-review) • [2](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/may/30/time-that-remains-film-review) French critics placed Suleiman in a comic lineage running from [Jacques Tati](https://www.edgepedia.org/jacques-tati) and [Buster Keaton](https://www.edgepedia.org/buster-keaton) to [Charlie Chaplin](https://www.edgepedia.org/charlie-chaplin); Antoine Thirion in *Cahiers du cinéma* compared him to Takeshi Kitano, while Thomas Burel in *Studio Ciné Live* wrote that the direction made each scene a film standing on its own.[11](https://www.cinematechhaddad.com/Cinematech/WICinema/WIC_10035.HTM) French called the result a cool, controlled minor masterpiece, detached, oblique, and surreal, and compared its autobiographical family chronicle to Fellini's *Amarcord*.[2](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/may/30/time-that-remains-film-review)\n\n## References\n\n1. [The Time That Remains, Artemis Productions](https://www.artemisproductions.com/en/films/THE_TIME_THAT_REMAINS)\n2. [Philip French, \"The Time That Remains,\" The Guardian, 30 May 2010](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/may/30/time-that-remains-film-review)\n3. [The Time That Remains, Cineuropa](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/108459/en/newsdetail/377893/)\n4. [The Time That Remains (Il tempo che ci rimane), Filmitalia](https://filmitalia.org/en/film/53731/)\n5. [الزمن الباقي (2009), مؤسسة الشارقة للفنون](https://www.sharjahart.org/ar/event/details/the-time-that-remains-2009-ar)\n6. [The Time That Remains (2009) – Awards, IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1037163/awards/)\n7. [Adania Shibli, \"The song remains the same: on The Time That Remains,\" Sight and Sound, BFI](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/song-remains-same-time-that-remains)\n8. [إيليا سليمان يختار رام الله لعرض «الزمن المتبقي», البيان, 12 يوليو 2009](https://www.albayan.ae/our-homes/2009-07-12-1.452552)\n9. [The Time That Remains: Elia Suleiman, Sight and Sound interview, BFI](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/interviews/time-that-remains-elia-suleiman)\n10. [The Time That Remains (2009) – Company credits, IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1037163/companycredits/)\n11. [نديم جرجورة، «كل مشهد فيلم»، كتبوا في السينما، السفير، 6 أغسطس 2009](https://www.cinematechhaddad.com/Cinematech/WICinema/WIC_10035.HTM)\n12. [The Time That Remains (2009), elCinema](https://elcinema.com/work/1732266/)\n13. [Peter Bradshaw, \"The Time That Remains,\" The Guardian, 27 May 2010](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/may/27/the-time-that-remains-film-review)\n\n---\n*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › War and historical films (individual works) › Historical dramas and epics › Titles M to Z › Titles Sc to Z*\n\n*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*\n\n*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*\n\nLicense: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license\n", "same_as": [], "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/the-time-that-remains", "markdown_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/the-time-that-remains.md", "license": { "name": "Edgepedia Community License 1.0", "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license", "summary": "Free with credit, commercial use included. AI training is open to everyone. For other uses, organizations over USD 100M in revenue or 100M monthly users license separately.", "spdx": "LicenseRef-Edgepedia-Community-1.0" }, "credit": "\"The Time That Remains (الزمن الباقي)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/the-time-that-remains. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "credit_md": "\"[The Time That Remains (الزمن الباقي)](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-time-that-remains)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), [https://www.edgepedia.org/the-time-that-remains](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-time-that-remains). [Edgepedia Community License 1.0](https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license).", "credit_html": "\"The Time That Remains (الزمن الباقي)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/the-time-that-remains. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "speakable": "The Time That Remains is Elia Suleiman's 2009 semi-autobiographical Palestinian drama in four episodes, 1948 to the present, based on his father's diaries and mother's letters; a Cannes Palme d'Or nominee and third in his Nazareth trilogy." }