Any doubts of Taher’s limitations as an actor are vanquished. There’s a real grit, in both the execution of the scenes and in Taher’s performance.

this time in Cyprus in 1974 when the Turkish army invaded the island. As with Farha, much of The Palace is shot from the point of view of someone hiding from the invaders. Yet in that film, our view is deliberately limited and obscured, while the sound design conveys the disorientation and confusion of war. In The Palace we comprehend the fear of both victim and perpetrator and the nuance acts to heighten our suspense and fear.

I want to be clear that this isn’t a question of doubting the reality of the brutalities that Farha depicts. Some of the finest anti-war films have prioritised the perspective of children, such as Roberto Rossellini’s Germany Year Zero (1948), Elem Klimov’s Come and See (1985) and Cate Shortland’s Lore (2012). Yet the atrocities that dominate these films are rooted in shattered physical and existential landscapes where the horror isn’t the emanation of a Manichaean evil but arises from the failures, cowardice and terror of humans. It is this emotional and intellectual sophistication that makes my memory of them indelible, years after viewing them.

There is a great narrative film about the Naqba: Elia Suleiman’s masterpiece The Time That Remains (2009), which essays the creation and existence of Israel as rooted in the tragedy of the occupation and continual dispossession of the Palestinians. He is a filmmaker who trusts that the plastic elements of cinema – sound and vision – can do justice to interpretation and understanding. I left the cinema after watching that film and I felt as if I was soaring, in part because of the questions and arguments that it left me with, alongside my gratitude for the ravishing beauty of its structure and execution.

Farha is well told and I’m glad I saw it for the raw strength of Taher’s hesitant performance. Yet, apart from the quiet elegance of the opening, an hour or so after watching it I struggled to remember any of it. There’s a price an artist pays for eschewing nuance and not trusting her audience. Coarseness • is cheap and it leaves you unsatisfied.

The Palestinian Film Festival plays in capital cities across Australia until November 20.