When Khaled (Ali Suliman), a Palestinian visual artist, drives a young American poet (Haale Gafori) through a checkpoint on her first visit to Israel, he is shocked to see Eyal (Guy el Hanan), the Israeli soldier who once detained and tortured him, an unexpected encounter which brings up painful memories of his interrogation. Told through memories and dreams, poems and paintings, Jessica Habie’s debut feature film puts the accent on the collision between Khaled’s yearning for freedom and Eyal’s desire to control him, creating a hallucinatory tale of unfulfilled longings. In doing so Mars at Sunrise addresses the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through stylized compositions and a nontraditional narrative.