Elia Suleiman casts himself in his second feature about Palestinian life in the occupied territories. Most definitely critical of Israel, he presents the region's explosive political situation and the struggles and contradictions of Palestinian life in a humorous and intelligent way.

Set in Suleiman's home town of Nazareth, Divine Intervention is more of a series of sketches and character studies than a film that has followed the rules of beginning, middle and end. Suleiman's overall theme is the frustration of living somewhere governed by checkpoints and borders, and for a film with little dialogue it also suggests a people without a voice.

Compared to Jacques Tati for his observational and visual jokes, Suleiman weaves some very well crafted situations into play. There is the man who constantly throws rubbish bags into his neighbour's garden, a group of men beating and shooting what we find out eventually is a snake, a man waiting at a bus stop for a bus that doesn't come, and a man who hoards empty bottles on his rooftop to throw at the police who come to arrest him. The sketches are more loaded than these brief explanations, and are chopped up and spliced together to show people repeating the same action over and over like the laboured mechanics of a heavy, over-worked machine.

Suleiman plays the character of ES who is in love with a woman (Khadar) he meets at an Israeli checkpoint, their hands passionately touching and their silent faces saying more than any conversation or sexual encounter. To show his love for his girlfriend ES blows up a balloon on which is painted the face of Yassar Arafat which he lets loose over the checkpoint into Jerusalem . In another scene, a woman (Khadar again) wearing sunglasses and a Jackie Kennedy shift dress strides down a long road, past border guards who are frozen by her boldness. As the camera pulls back to take in the full landscape, the checkpoint tower collapses in her wake (perhaps Suleiman also has a message here about female power to destabilise the enemy?).

Suleiman carefully mixes his camera angles between far away shots and close-ups and the heights of his subjects. We move from an overhead shot of a woman furiously building a bonfire to a close-up of a man reading at his table; a woman on a balcony looks up to the street above where a man is waiting at the bus stop; scenes of a man asking another to move his car flits between the street and an apartment balcony. Whilst being visually more interesting, this movement between opposites and extremes also helps to encapsulate the wider political tension.

Certain controversy surrounded the film a few years ago when it was denied entry for an Academy Award. Refused for nomination for best foreign-language film, the Academy's excuse at the time was that the film originated from a country not formally recognised by the UN (and had obviously forgotten they had previously accepted nominations on behalf of Puerto Rico, Taiwan and Wales). But their loss really, as Divine Intervention picked up the Jury Prize and the FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes.

Also entitled The Chronicles of Love and Pain, Divine Intervention is an exploration of the extremes of emotion experienced in a situation where to vocalise your feelings is to come up against a myriad of conditions imposed upon you. In the film's closing scenes Suleiman moves away from his existing narrative style to a ninja-like dance sequence involving a Palestinian freedom fighter shooting Israeli soldiers, in the stylistic vein of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon . Scenes like this have been too much for some US film critics who consider this evidence of Suleiman's lack of impartiality, rather than taking it in the ironic vein of the rest of the film. This view also disregards Suleiman's somewhat critical portrayal of his own people, many of whom are shown fighting and even killing each other. As with all the smaller parts of his film, it is essential that they are read as part of a whole for Suleiman's message to be properly understood.

For this director Palestinians have no voice, no one is listening, they are silenced, waiting and watching like some impassive and lethargic pawns in a greater territorial combat. Whether you agree is not really important, as Suleiman has very effectively used the medium of film to project something seen very rarely in western cinemas: a film about Palestinian Arabs that criticises the Jewish occupation. As more films made by Palestinians begin to surface, the cinema may prove an interesting place for both sides to air their concerns.