Boston Palestine Film Festival

 Sorry for the late notice, but be sure to check out the fourth annual Boston Palestine Film Festival starting tonight at the Museum of Fine Arts and running through to October 10.

The opening night film is Michel Khleifi's  "Zindeeq,"  in which a filmmaker named M. tries to recover the past experience of his family by making a documentary about the 1948 war that established Israel and uprooted thousands of Palestinians. As he shoots interviews in Ramallah for this exploration of the past, the present intrudes when his nephew kills someone, unleashing a blood feud with the victim's family.  Against his better judgment, M. heads for the family home in Nazareth, where he's forced to flee the violence but must come face-to-face with his own anomie and the meaning of his life and art.

The title means "freethinker," though "free-lover" might be equally apt - M.'s self-destructive womanizing, not to mention the film's self-reflexivity, makes this kind of like "8-1/2" set in the Occupied Territory. And ironically for the avowedly godless protagonist,  the Christian allusions multiply, starting with M. finding no room at the inn as he is turned away from all the hotels in his home town of Nazareth.

Khleifi, who also made the wonderful "Wedding in Galilee" in 1995,  will be available for a discussion following the film, which is his first in 14 years.

The MFA is at 465 Huntington Ave and the show starts at 7 p.m. with a reception to follow.