The Palestinian director Elia Suleiman, known for his deadpan observational comedies and the most expressively quizzical eyebrows in the business, returns after a decade’s absence. In common with his other films (Divine Intervention, The Time That Remains, among others), Suleiman appears in It Must Be Heaven as a droll, near-silent presence, bearing witness to the absurdities of the world around him. That world expands beyond Palestine; the film’s journey takes him to Paris and New York in search of funding for a movie that is deemed to be “not Palestinian enough”. Wry rather than uproarious, it’s a little uneven at times. But Suleiman is a master of slow-burning, cumulative humour; this is the kind of comedy that creeps up on you.
