VENICE: Palestinian filmmaker Rashid Masharawi draws the Venice festival into the lost world of the Middle East's teeming refugee camps with his sometimes ironic look at his compatriots' destiny in his latest film "Waiting." "We Palestinians have the feeling of not being in control of our destiny. The hope of a possible solution comes around regularly, but has fallen apart and then we just start waiting again. Waiting has become an integral part of our lives. It's at the root of our entire being," he says.

Before leaving the Palestinian territories to study abroad, film director Ahmad, played by Mahmoud Massad, is persuaded to do one last job, audition actors for the new, fictional, Palestinian National Theater.

Casting the net wide for acting talent, he sets out on an often frustrating but ultimately enlightening road trip with journalist Bissan (Areen Omari) and cameraman Lumiere (Youssef Baroud).

During the auditions in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, Ahmad tells the would-be actors to play the role of someone waiting.

Masharawi knows his subject well, being a refugee himself, unable to return to his home in the West Bank town of Ramallah, where he used to run a film and cultural center, for the past three years.

"So I used my time waiting outside to go back to my home to make this film," says Masharawi, who has made some 20 films over the past two decades.

Despite the grim subject matter, including images of the cemeteries of victims of the massacres at the Sabra and Chatila camps in Lebanon razed by the Israelis, the story is told with not a little humor and irony.

"In my own personal experience, I've spent many times waiting in my life. For example, while under curfew with my family in Gaza for two months. We cannot be sad for two months. We are laughing sometimes. We tell jokes. We try to make our lives as nice as possible during the situation."

Shot last October and November in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, the film uses around 50 Palestinian refugees playing themselves.

"There is a lot of discussion in Palestine now about refugees, a lot of negotiations with Israel, with America involved, Europe involved, but all the time they are talking about numbers. ... I wanted in this film to visualise what it means to be a Palestinian refugee," he says.

While Bissan completes here sound checks for the auditions, she recites in mechanical fashion the stock phrases of her work as an anchorwoman with Palestinian television, the everyday phrases of Palestinian hope: "The European Union expressed the hope ... the Palestinian prime minister hopes that the crisis can be resolved."

Though Masharawi says he does not consider himself a political filmmaker, he says that to be a Palestinian filmmaker "is political, because of what you see inside our films.

"We are not trying to be political. We are trying to tell our stories, we want to explain our life," he says.

Masharawi's film, co-produced by the Franco-German Arte television channel, is being screened in Venice as part of the Author's Days section, and will be in competition at the Toronto Film Festival this week.