Reading like an Ibsen play, but with the severity of occupation as a backdrop, Laila Abbas’ sophomore feature Thank You For Banking With Us!, nominated for Best Film at last year’s BFI London Film Festival, brings comedy and drama to an unenviable situation, but with morale and vitality for family life rather than nihilism.

Thank You For Banking With Us! is one of a few films on the London Palestine Film Festival 2025 programme that gives very little airtime to the current conflict. Instead of sweeping political explorations of each side, the film zooms into a human level, focusing on familial conflicts on a human level. Whether the morale of the story, preaching an ethos of pride and determination, is a microcosm of Palestinian voices on the world-political stage or not is a discussion for another time. What the film does achieve is restore social complexity to the images of a land that mainstream media often portrays as a warzone.

The drama centres around two sisters, Noura (Yasmine Al Massri) and Maryam (Clara Khoury), who, in the wake of their father’s death, are trying to withdraw his savings by assuming his identity. What may immediately sound like a heartless, morbid venture is important due to the strictures of Shariah Law, the majority of the fortune could go to their ex-patriated brother. Having looked after their father in his later years, remaining in Palestine with their families until the end, the sisters feel they are more entitled to the money, and so attempt to bypass these Laws without the knowledge of their brother or other family members.

Of course, the sisters struggle with grief in their own ways; Maryam being the working mother with a failing marriage, trying not to let the sadness get to her, while Noura, the outcast who ended up looking after her father the most, is frustrated by her position as the youngest female, entitled to the least amount of money (it is her suggestion in the first place to take the money, as she was the one who set up the account in her father’s name to avoid it being lost).

But the daughters seem to have lost more than just their father. With the cunning precision of an Ibsen play, Abbas uses death as a conduit for broader discussions about women’s roles in Palestinian society. Without the familial anchorage, the threat of subjugation within the family unit to mothers and cooks intensifies. Among the grief of mourning, Abbas nests fleets of urgency around the sisters’ newfound necessity to establish themselves as independent, taking what is effectively theirs.

It is in this void of dependence that we also find Abbas’ sense of humour. In this sisterly relationship, free of the patriarch, they begin to talk more candidly with each other; we get a sense, through Al Massri and Khoury’s embodiment of Abbas’ writing, that this is a new development for them. The dialogue, which at times feels a bit formulaic (although this does give it a certain pre-determined feel that amplifies the lack of communication between them), includes many pithy quips and comments that make light of the death, or of their life struggles, or sometimes even the occupation (which is often invoked nihilistically; as if being a woman isn’t hard enough, now they’re part of a suppressed community).

While some laughter from the auditorium seemed more disbelieving than entertained, the comedic inflections certainly grounded Thank You For Banking With Us!. It feels like it is emerging naturally, a mishapen quirk of their heavily moralised lives, free from the strictures of the family structure. As well as entertaining, it also creates a sense of void for the sisters, making their quest not only for money but for independence all the more gripping.

What results is a comedy-drama that comments on life in a traditional family, in a country under occupation. Abbas’ achievement, however, lies in the low-key, wink-nudge register that she and her players tell the story through, successfully relating grand issues to the family unit.

Image courtesy of London Palestine Film Festival