47th Annual Chicago International Film Festival:
In the new Palestinian dramedy Man Without a Cell Phone, individual characters may lack depth, but when director Sameh Zoabi puts them all together, he creates an interesting panorama of Palestinian life. The plot revolves around a man named “Saleh” who worries that a new cell phone tower on the edge of his olive grove is an Israeli plot to give everyone in his village cancer. But despite this pseudo-political overlay, most of Man Without a Cell Phone is a benignly universal spin on father/son dynamics.
