What Walaa Wants

What Walaa Wants Not to spoil the surprise, but What Walaa Wants is to be a police officer for the Palestinian Authority. It’s ironic when you consider that her mom is an ex-con who spent eight years in an Israeli prison for abetting a would-be suicide bomber.

All this is spelled out in the opening minutes of Canadian director Christy Garland’s fly-on-the-wall documentary. Garland spent years following Walaa Khaled Fawzy Tanji, growing up in the overcrowded West Bank Balata refugee camp.

“Palestinian Authority or not, when I’m 18 I’m getting a gun,” says the headstrong teenager early in the film. Yet when they want to take a blood sample in the police recruitment office she balks, and needs her mom to handhold her through it.

Such polarizations seem to define Walaa, whom the cameras follow through training at the Palestinian Police Academy. We watch as the young recruit rolls her eyes at the barked orders, complains about the food and is called on the carpet for fake fainting and smuggling cigarettes. But it’s impossible to know if her superiors are tough on her because the foreign film crew watching them — or if Walaa is acting out for the same reason.

In any case, the real question is not what Walaa wants but whether she’ll get it. This one chooses a narrow focus, and delivers with crystal clarity. ∫∫∫1/2