Welcome to Hard Talk from the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker.

My guest today was born and raised in prosperous West London

and established herself as a high-flying investment banker.

And then Farah Nebulz's career trajectory took a dramatic turn.

A decade ago, she visited the land her parents were from, the West Bank, home to

two and a half million Palestinians who, since 1967, have lived under Israeli military occupation.

That visit changed her forever. She felt compelled to go public with her feelings about the

Palestinian experience of occupation,

and the medium she chose was film. She taught herself the basics of movie making. She used

her knowledge of finance and networking, and she began to make films. The first few were shorts,

focused on what she saw as systemic injustice.

Her breakthrough came with her 25-minute film, The Present, which told a very simple human story and won a host of international awards.

Her latest film, The Teacher, is a full-fledged feature, which was filmed in 2022 in and around Nablus in the West Bank,

but which has been released internationally in the last year. The timing is significant.

It was made before Hamas's October 7th assault on southern Israel,

but it's being viewed in the light of everything that has happened since.

Farah Nabilsi wants audiences to see and feel the Palestinian experience in intimate, human,

emotional detail. But is that possible in the current climate? Well, she joins me now. Farah Nabilsi,

welcome to hard talk. Good to be here. You began your

professional life as a young, successful investment banker in high finance. A decade ago,

you committed yourself full-time to writing and making films. Why the dramatic shift? Long story short is that I went

home home. So I am British, born, raised, educated in London, but my heritage is Palestinian. And so,

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