''Mayor'' () is a 2020 documentary film produced and directed by

David Osit David Osit (born May 6, 1987) is an American documentary filmmaker, editor and composer. His documentaries include ''Mayor'' and ''Thank You for Playing''. Life and career Osit was raised in the suburbs of New York City in Tuckahoe (village) ...

. The film follows

Musa Hadid Musa Hadid ( ar, موسى حديد; born 1965) is a Palestinian political figure and the former mayor of Ramallah, Palestine. Education and early life Hadid studied at Birzeit University, graduating in 1993. He worked as a civil engineer for ...

, the mayor of

Ramallah Ramallah ( , ; ar, رام الله, , God's Height) is a Palestinian city in the central West Bank that serves as the ''de facto'' administrative capital of the State of Palestine. It is situated on the Judaean Mountains, north of Jerusale ...

, the

de facto ''De facto'' ( ; , "in fact") describes practices that exist in reality, whether or not they are officially recognized by laws or other formal norms. It is commonly used to refer to what happens in practice, in contrast with ''de jure'' ("by la ...

capital Capital may refer to: Common uses * Capital city, a municipality of primary status ** List of national capital cities * Capital letter, an upper-case letter Economics and social sciences * Capital (economics), the durable produced goods used f ...

Palestine __NOTOC__ Palestine may refer to: * State of Palestine, a state in Western Asia * Palestine (region), a geographic region in Western Asia * Palestinian territories, territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely the West Bank (including East ...

, for two years.

Release

''Mayor'' premiered in March 2020 at the

True/False Film Fest True/False Film Fest is an annual documentary film festival that takes place in Columbia, Missouri. The Fest occurs on the first weekend in March (sometimes beginning in late February), with films being shown from Thursday evening to Sunday nigh ...

, one of the last film festivals to proceed as scheduled in the first half of 2020 due to the

Coronavirus pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identified ...

. The film was acquired by

Film Movement Film Movement is a North American distributor of independent and foreign films, which is based in New York City, founded in 2003. History Film Movement was founded in 2003, and has released more than 250 feature films and shorts. Having grown fr ...

for theatrical distribution in North America, beginning at

Film Forum Film Forum is a nonprofit movie theater at 209 West Houston Street in Greenwich Village, Manhattan. It began in 1970 as an alternative screening space for independent films, with 50 folding chairs, one projector and a $19,000 annual budget. Ka ...

on December 2, and was released online on the

Criterion Channel The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinep ...

and

video on demand Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos without a traditional video playback device and the constraints of a typical static broadcasting schedule. In the 20th century, broadcasting in the form of o ...

platforms in early 2021. The film was subsequently a recipient of a 2022

Peabody Award The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards or the Peabodys) program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Peabody, honor the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in television, radio, and ...

Reception

On review aggregator

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews. The site's critical consensus reads, "A clear-eyed look at an extraordinary subject, ''Mayor'' makes essential viewing out of one politician's quest to preserve dignity in the midst of bureaucracy." In his Critic's Pick review for ''

Indiewire IndieWire (sometimes stylized as indieWIRE or Indiewire) is a film industry and review website that was established in 1996. The site's focus was predominantly independent film, although its coverage has grown to "to include all aspects of Hollyw ...

'' Eric Kohn writes "There have been countless documentaries made about the West Bank experience, from “5 Broken Cameras” to “The Settlers,” and they often involve the travails of ordinary life existing side by side with military persecution. “Mayor” offers a striking new perspective on that struggle, with a personal on-the-ground quality matched by grand tonal ambitions that makes it the best of its subgenre." Tomris Laffley of ''

Variety Variety may refer to: Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats * Variety (radio) * Variety show, in theater and television Films * ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont * ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...

'' writes "Osit brings a respectful approach that admirably never registers as observations of a patronizing Westerner", and called the film "astonishing" and "sharply witty". Many reviews praised the film's use of dark comedy; in his Critic's Pick review for ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' Ben Kenigsberg calls the film "surprisingly funny", Stephen Saito of Movable Fest writes that the film often resembles "a lost season of

Veep ''Veep'' is an American political satire comedy television series that aired on HBO from April 22, 2012, to May 12, 2019. The series was created by Armando Iannucci as an adaptation of his sitcom ''The Thick of It''. The protagonist of ''Veep'' ...

" and Mary McNamara of

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...

describes the film as both "troubling and hilarious". Alissa Wilkinson of Vox wrote "At times, it plays like Veep — if the characters in Veep were actually kind, compassionate, and oriented toward what best serves the public’s interest. But Mayor also shows how challenging the job of mayor is, even for a talented leader like Hadid, who struggles to show the world what the citizens of his city are facing as they, and he, go about their lives under impossible and seemingly intractable circumstances."

Awards

Lists

References

External links

* * *{{Rotten Tomatoes, m/mayor, Mayor 2020 films American documentary films 2020 documentary films Documentary films about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict 2020s English-language films 2020s Arabic-language films Israeli–Palestinian conflict films 2020 multilingual films American multilingual films 2020s American films News & Documentary Emmy Award winning programs