"At eight o'clock, it's Laila's birthday, okay?" Palestinian judge turned cab driver Abu Laila's wife reminds her husband. But on his young daughter's birthday, like any day, Abu faces a nerve-wracking shift in a Ramallah yellow cab armed only with an ex-jurist's misplaced pride, a father's loyalty, and a sticker reminding passengers that smoking and carrying AK-47s are prohibited. Rather than address politics or document holy war heroics and villainy, Laila's Birthday focuses on the toll that the unending Palestinian-Israeli conflict extracts from civilians clinging to both employment and a semblance of normal life amidst chaos and corruption, missile attacks and bursts of gunfire.
as Abu Laila
as Um Laila
as Laila
as Former Prisoner
as Director in the Ministry of Justice
as Mechanic
as Woman passenger to the hospital
as Policeman in the police station
as Donkey's Owner
as the second taxi driver
as Gas Station Employee