Mayor
For much of “Mayor,” you aren’t necessarily thinking about the larger context of the world that Musa Hadid inhabits; even when he is having meetings with German diplomats or listening to news of the outside world, you feel as though you are watching him go through the motions of leading a city, trying to find its identity. The moments you do think about that context, however, it hits you pretty profoundly how tough Hadid’s job is- not only is he the Mayor of a city one of the most dangerous places in the world, but his city isn’t really part of a country that can support him the way others could. It’s hard not to admire him a little more when you put things in that context.
The city that Musa Hadid is Mayor of is Ramallah, which is seen as one of the leading cities of Palestine. A Christian, he finds himself at a nexus point of religious difficulties, with Israeli settlements on all sides of the city, and not really a part of any country, but an occupied land which shares the city of Jerusalem with Israel. As we are watching in David Osit’s fascinating, entertaining documentary, it is in 2017, when Donald Trump acknowledges Jerusalem as the rightful capital city of Israel (something that risks inflaming tensions in the region further), and saying that the U.S. Embassy will be moved there. How does a Christian lead a city in a Muslim part of the world surrounded by Jewish people? Honestly, without really letting religion define the city. But that leads to the question of, how does the city define itself, when it’s part of a region without a set identity on its own? That is the question Hadid is struggling with in municipality meetings with his advisers at the beginning of the movie, and it’s one he is trying to answer throughout the film’s 89 minutes.
Osit sets the stage for Ramallah’s complicated geographic location throughout “Mayor,” but, as he said in the Q&A after the movie, he wasn’t sure that he, a Western filmmaker, could do it justice, even though he filmed plenty at checkpoints, and protests, and places around the city where the larger political landscape comes more into view. Indeed, we get hints of it when we are following Hadid to a checkpoint, where protesters are gathering, only to have him leave when Israeli forces start firing on them. In a tense sequence later in the film, Hadid is at City Hall while Israeli officers are in the streets just outside, occupying buildings and shooting tear gas, and civilians. These sequences help to illuminate why Hadid seems to focus so much on seemingly-frivolous manners of business, like the fountain ceremony, or the Christmas tree lighting, or more governmental manners like when contractors are destroying women’s restrooms in the city. As Hadid said in the Q&A, the best he can do is control what he can control, especially when there is not much in the way of stability around his city. Hopefully, if he does that much, he can lead Ramallah towards a better future. That would be nice to see.
