Alam: Coming-of-age drama about a Palestinian teenager's love and political awakening

There are many quotes about youth being the future but in Alam, the feature directorial debut of Palestinian filmmaker Firas Khoury, they are also the present saving the past.

It's a cultural responsibility for Palestine's youngsters that feels especially poignant today; the child death toll due to Israel's current war on Gaza has reached over 13,000 in six months and continues to rise.

How will younger generations ensure the future of their culture, heritage and history when their lives are unjustly extinguished before adulthood?

"It's a day of mourning and an annual reminder of the Nakba that saw the displacement, destruction and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Israeli forces seven decades earlier"

Khoury's coming-of-age drama takes place in a predominantly Palestinian Arab village of Israeli State-run Galilee, grappling with the ongoing struggle for Palestinian sovereignty and longevity with patience and tenderness.

Its title, the Arabic word for "flag," becomes a recurring visual and narrative motif charting the clandestine course of a group of school kids as they attempt to raise the Palestine flag in the days leading up to Israel's Day of Independence.

For them, it's a day of mourning and an annual reminder of the 1948 Nakba that saw the displacement, destruction and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Israeli forces seven decades earlier.

Raising the flag is a risky operation of defiance but during 109 minutes, Khoury carefully portrays the gutsy and, at times, naive drive of a youth awakened by the politics of identity, nationalism and systemic oppression.

Seventeen-year-old Tamer (sensitively played by Mahmood Bakri) and his friends Shekel (Mohammad Karaki) and Rida (Ahmad Zaghmouri) are introduced as apathetic teens skipping class to smoke cigarettes and discuss the ethics of chasing girls while mindlessly scrolling on their phones.

It's the sort of inane chatter you might expect from a group of young lads at any school around the world; Shekel (a nickname) is the loudmouth, Rida's a bit of a smart-alec and Tamer is the quiet, artsy one whose latest creative endeavour – scratching a face onto his school desk – results in his final warning with the school.

The risk of expulsion adds to domestic tension already simmering within his family due to his somewhat surly choice to live in his grandfather's house.

The place is rundown, with peeling floral wallpaper, chipped wooden furniture and a rusty fuse box that keeps turning the electricity off.

Still, it's a rich, colourful homestead with personality, his family history and filled with ageing framed portraits of revolution that inspire Tamer's personal artistry.

By keeping the lights on, Tamer is keeping Palestine alive with his residence serving as a passive rebellion against assimilation into the Israeli State, represented by the white-washed modernity of the new home occupied by his younger sister, pregnant mother and father.

Tamer's dad (Amer Hlehel) embodies an older generation of Palestinians whose ancestors avoided expulsion during the Nakba.

Now, their economic and social survival depends upon accepting the Israeli narrative of events and evading the risk of state-sanctioned violence by not taking part in protests against the unequal society they live in.

This emphasis is felt in strained conversations between father and son and the slow-releasing backstory of his mentally unwell uncle Naji (Bakri's real-life brother and celebrated actor Saleh Bakri).

This familial sub-plot could have been fleshed out more but keeping the older generation in the periphery allows the focus to remain on the tumultuousness of adolescence as sexuality and politics are both awakened in Tamer.

"Lives are taken, symbols are burned but new souls enter the world and the commitment to Palestine's future lives on"

The arrival of pretty, politically active student Maysaa​​’ (Sereen Khass) at his school and next door pulls the would-be artist out of his reverie.

Cinematographer Frida Marzouk gently captures the flutters of youthful infatuation with every furtive glance, desiring close-ups of Maysaa​​'s skin and loaded silence filling the two-shot with the young lovers.

Their romance adds sweetness and light while Muhammad Abed Elrahman exudes rebellious fire into charming student agitator Safwat.

His emotive rebuttal against his teacher perpetuating the "Zionist story, not ours" is a rousing moment that pushes these young people towards a third act laced with pathos and the harsh reality of discrimination.

Lives are taken, symbols are burned but new souls enter the world and the commitment to Palestine's future lives on.

Hanna Flint is a film and TV critic, writer and author of Strong Female Character with bylines at Empire, Time Out, Elle, Town & Country, the Guardian, BBC Culture and IGN

Follow her here: @HannaFlint