When their father unexpectedly dies, two sparring sisters must come together in a race against time to covertly claim their rightful inheritance from the bank, before, by order of Sharia Law, it is passed on to their estranged brother instead.
As part of the Arab British Centre’s 2025 SAFAR Film Festival, the Palestine-set Thank You For Banking With Us! is a claustrophobic and desperate drama with moments of sardonic, biting humour, touching upon themes of sisterhood, hopelessness, resilience, and most prominent of all – oppression.
Yasmine Al Massri and Clara Khoury play the distant, middle-aged sisters, each burdened with their own struggles. One is trapped in a loveless marriage, ground down by the mundanity of domestic life and an unappreciative family. The other works in a salon, waxing the wealthy during the day, and (up until recently) caring for their stroke victim father by night, whilst simultaneously finding the time to have an affair with a married man. The sisters seem to begrudge each other’s respective life choices, and it is only when they are forced to spend extended time in each other’s company that they realise the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. The actresses do well in portraying a realistic bond between siblings, treading that fine line between petty snipes and unconditional love. The dialogue between them is surprisingly sparse, though each line is considered and necessary, carrying the weight of a life-time’s worth of sibling resentment.
The theme of oppression bears down on practically every scene: the sisters feel it not just from Sharia Law, but from bank officials, affair partners, husbands, their own blood relatives. And it spreads even further afield – every character, not just the sisters, suffers oppression in some distinct way, be it the teenage son physically locked inside his bedroom, a father haunted by a traumatic past, or the threat of war and eradication looming ominously in the background. It is easy to sympathise with the sisters’ desperation to claim their inheritance before it is snatched away from them, but, as one character succinctly and depressingly berates them: “Why are you women so obsessed with being happy these days?” Their plight, therefore, is not simply about liberating their father’s money from the bank, but liberating themselves.
Writer-director Laila Abbas keeps the story lean, restraining the ticking-time bomb narrative to just over twenty-four hours. Whilst a touch episodic in nature, the film’s nighttime odyssey/ siblings under pressure quality would make it an effective companion piece to the Safdie brothers’ underrated film Good Time. Though her debut feature-length film, Abbas demonstrates real skill behind the camera – there are several lengthy one-take shots that are so confidently and seamlessly executed, they barely register to the viewer, yet are vital to keeping the pulse rate high. The exclamation mark in the English translation of the title perhaps does the film a disservice, suggestive of a camp and zany comedy. Quite the opposite – this a serious, thoughtful and multi-layered film, with flashes of acerbic humour, which puts forward a compelling case to reassess gender equality under Sharia Law.
Thank You for Banking with Us! will be screening at Plymouth Arts Cinema on 13th June as part of SAFAR Film Festival.
Reviewed by Matthew Onuki Luke
