''It Must Be Heaven'' () is a 2019 internationally co-produced

comedy-drama Comedy drama (also known by the portmanteau dramedy) is a hybrid genre of works that combine elements of comedy and Drama (film and television), drama. In film, as well as scripted television series, serious dramatic subjects (such as death, il ...

film directed, written and starred by

Elia Suleiman Elia Suleiman (, ; born 28 July 1960) is a Palestinian film director and actor. He is best known for the 2002 film ''Divine Intervention'' (), a modern tragicomedy on living under occupation in Palestine which won the Jury Prize at the 2002 Cann ...

. It was selected to compete for the

Palme d'Or The (; ) is the highest prize awarded to the director of the Best Feature Film of the Official Competition at the Cannes Film Festival. It was introduced in 1955 by the festival's organizing committee. Previously, from 1939 to 1954, the festiv ...

at the

2019 Cannes Film Festival The 72nd annual Cannes Film Festival took place from 14 to 25 May 2019. Mexican filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu served as jury president for the main competition. South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho won the , the festival's top prize, fo ...

. It was selected as the Palestinian entry for the Best International Feature Film at the

92nd Academy Awards The 92nd Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored films released in 2019 and took place on February 9, 2020, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles, beginning at 5:00 ...

, but it was not nominated.

Plot

Palestinian Palestinians () are an Arab ethnonational group native to the Levantine region of Palestine. *: "Palestine was part of the first wave of conquest following Muhammad's death in 632 CE; Jerusalem fell to the Caliph Umar in 638. The indigenous p ...

man travels abroad. He encounters strange and familiar scenes.

Cast

Reception

, the film holds a approval rating on

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website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...

, based on reviews, with an average rating of . The website's critics consensus reads: "An entrancing blend of the poignant and the absurd, ''It Must Be Heaven'' finds writer-director Elia Suleiman returning to action in peak form." On

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

, the film holds a rating of 69 out of 100, based on 8 reviews, indicating "generally favorable".

Awards

At the

, ''It Must Be Heaven'' received the Special Mention from the Main Competition Jury, and the

FIPRESCI Prize The International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI, short for ''Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique'') is an association of national organizations of professional film critics and film journalists from around the worl ...

for Best Film In Competition. At the 2019

Brussels International Film Festival (BRIFF) Brussels Film Festival, Brussels International Film Festival or Festival International du Film de Bruxelles may refer to: *Brussels International Film Festival (1974–2016), also known as the Brussels European Film Festival, Brussels Film Festival ...

, the film was awarded 4,000 € in broadcasting rights in Belgium.

References

External links