israel

Murder Under the Bridge: A Palestine Mystery

admin — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 00:21:00 +0000

Political intrigue is a great backdrop for a mystery. Look at The Manchurian Candidate, The Third Man or any of Henning Mankell’s wonderful Wallander mysteries. A murder can highlight the struggles for power, the needs of the many versus the needs of the few, and the ways people hurt each other at both the micro and macro levels. If they are written well. If they aren’t, the work feels something like Murder Under the Bridge by Kate Raphael.

Set in modern day Israel and the Occupied Territories, Murder Under the Bridge opens with the death of a young woman found in a field near the wall between the two countries. Rania, a Palestinian police officer, and Chloe, an American peace activist, work together (or in parallel) to solve the case, which winds along both sides of the wall through various political ideologies and into human trafficking and war crimes. One of the most important aspects of a good mystery is that all of the pieces have to be put on the table, and then put together. The complexity of the crime is inverse to the number of subplots.

If the victim dies in a locked room from a bee sting when they aren’t allergic to bees, confining all of the players to a big country house focuses the narrative enough to allow the reader to follow the plot twists. When it takes five pages to get from one side of the city to the other, the crime can’t have too many twists, or the reader gets lost. Murder Under the Bridge falls into the second category. An unfamiliar setting, new characters, and a complicated murder with at least fifteen named characters present too many strands for Raphael to weave together coherently. There is not even time for an ending.

I wish Raphael had focused solely on Chloe, the character she cares the most about. Her scenes are dynamic, interesting, and fleshed out. As an outsider, Chloe would be a good introduction to the setting. Not one of the other characters does anything special, exciting, or interesting; everyone starts out as a cliché and ends the same way.

The scenes with Rania are rushed and poorly drawn. When the Israeli police officer was introduced as Rania’s partner, I was hoping that the narrative would focus on them and use their similarities as way for each of them—both very bigoted characters—to evolve. Instead, the longest, most lovingly written scene is of graphic sex that is only tangentially related to the murder. The discussion of finding the dead body is only half as detailed.

Perhaps a good mystery is hidden in this book. Right now, it’s stuck under the layers of useless detail, pointless scenes, and cliché.

Written by: Taylor Rhodes, July 21st 2010

For My Father

admin — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Directed by Dror Zahavi

Israfilm, Relevant F!lm

Centering on the chaste love affair between a Palestinian and an Israeli, For My Father offers the viewer a Middle Eastern re-telling of Romeo and Juliet while trying to spell out the complexities of post-intifada Israel.

The film opens up on Tarek (Shredi Jabarin), a Palestinian who has decided to act as suicide bomber. He’s ambivalent about the state of Israel—as well as Palestinian resistance to it—but takes action in order to salvage his yet-unseen father’s sullied reputation. After unsuccessfully trying to set off his bomb, he realizes that the device fails due to faulty wiring in the detonator, a jerry-rigged switch. Panicking, he flees, ending up in one of the scruffier areas of Tel Aviv. He ducks into an electronic repair shop, encountering Katz (Schlomo Vishinsky), an elderly Romanian Jew with a chip on his shoulder and a leaky roof. Tarek agrees to fix the hole in Katz’s roof in exchange for a new switch, which has to be ordered. As Shabbat is celebrated the next day, Katz’s shop will be closed until Sunday. Tarek is then forced to spend the weekend with the very people he was planning to kill.

During his sojourn, he interrupts the half-hearted suicide attempt of Mrs. Katz. He also befriends Keren (Hili Yalon), a beautiful tough-cookie who has fled her Orthodox Jewish community after an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. After saving her from a group of Orthodox toughs who object to her independent living and emo clothing, the two spend most of the following two days together, enjoying an easy rapport. Tarek rediscovers a passion for life which deepens his ambivalence about his mission. The fact that his handlers can detonate the bomb with a cell phone—and have threatened to harm his parents—only intensifies Tarek’s dilemma.

Yes, the movie did have its manipulative moments and the director unquestionably downplays the hostilities between Arabs and Jews in Israel. (The “Death to Arabs” graffiti scribbled on a building seemed downright contrived.) I found it odd that the Israeli characters never once questioned the very noticeable lump under Tarek’s clothes. For that matter, Keren and the Katzes seem too accepting of Tarek’s explanation for his very presence in Tel Aviv, a city that has kept Palestinians out via roadblocks for years. I also found myself questioning whether Israelis as a group are as averse to racial profiling as the Katzes and Keren are, and if the decision to paint Shaul, the one Jew who does express suspicion of Tarek, as a pompous buffoon wasn’t a subtle form of self-congratulation on the part of the Israeli director and screenwriters. I couldn’t help but wonder about how a Palestinian filmmaker would have approached this tale—or if a Palestinian would have chosen to tell this particular story at all.

In all fairness, however, this film wasn’t about the politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This film is basically a movie about outcasts and how they often instinctively seek out and cling to other outcasts, battling loneliness while skirting the edges of society. For My Father also touches on the very human need to maintain reputation with the emotionally fraught bond between parents and children driving the story in surprising ways. I appreciated the fact that the story doesn’t insult the audience with a tacked-on happy-ending; there’s no way that a movie with a terrorist as leading man can end on an emotional high note.

Despite its over-idealized view of ethnic strife and pseudo-philosophical leanings, I am going to recommend For My Father on the strengths of its understated and powerful performances. But anyone expecting to get a crash course on the current state of Israeli-Palestinian resentments needs to look elsewhere.

Written by: Ebony Edwards-Ellis, June 18th 2010

How to Ruin Your Boyfriend's Reputation

admin — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 15:55:00 +0000

By Simone Elkeles

Flux

The world of young adult books never ceases to be amazing. With a range of topics reminding us of our stressful adolescent selves, young adult books hold a set amount of information about friendships with other girls, jealousy, boyfriends, questions about sex, and overall embarrassing experiences that the characters will laugh about when they look back on their lives.

How to Ruin Your Boyfrend's Reputation fits perfectly into this mold. The third in a series by Simone Elkeles, this specific work explores a young woman's issues of sex, commitment to boyfriends, and the pettiness of some relationships with other girls. If we remember our younger attitudes of what is "cool" and important, we can easily identify with protagonist Amy Nelson-Bakar.

Amy signs up with her friends for a youth "bootcamp" in Israel. Although Amy’s friends join for more giving reasons, like learning about their Jewish culture, her ulterior motive is to see a boyfriend stationed at this specific base. She chooses to surprise him, and in doing so, he surprises her with his seriousness and responsibility as a slightly older man. The trials of the bootcamp wear on Amy, and as she begins to understand the commitment of her boyfriend and perseveres in difficult situations not unlike real military training, Amy learns to be a little more faithful and develops a tougher skin. She definitely learns some lessons by the end of the book, yet she maintains her teenage ideals, and as readers, we know she will continue to be challenged.

What is interesting about this novel is how the author brings her own Jewish background to her main character Amy. Elkeles explains Jewish terms for those who are not familiar with the words or traditions, and readers of all faiths can appreciate the quirky character of Amy. In addition, Elkeles captures a youthful attitude in her writing, and attributes her young adult books to maintaining this spirit. Growing up in the 1980s, Elkeles brings out struggles from her youth.

A delightful page turner, How to Ruin Your Boyfrend's Reputation proves that we, as young adults, face conflicts of all sizes, and we make choices to either persevere or give up. Reminding us of our childhoods, this book proves that we may make assumptions about life, but once we experience a little more, we can succeed and move on.

Written by: Carolyn Espe, January 17th 2010

World for Palestine 2010 Calendar

admin — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 09:00:00 +0000

By Resistance Art

The World for Palestine 2010 Wall Calendar features twelve cartoons drawn by Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff. Latuff’s images are stark, simple, and unflinching in their support of Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation. His images, like most political art or propaganda, do not explore political complexities or nuances, but rather bluntly convey the truth through art. His images emphasize themes of global silence around the genocide of Palestinian people, the struggle of resistance by Palestinians against Israeli violence, and the emotional foundation of hatred that enables the destruction of Palestinian people and their homeland to continue.

This calendar will only satisfy those that are looking for blatantly politicized images. The use of cartoons for political purposes in the U.S. is most commonly associated with revealing the hypocrisy of elected politicians in daily newspapers. These cartoons were, at first, surprising to view because their intention was more simplistically and fiercely stated than I was used to. The artwork in the calendar is meant to nourish the spirits of those fighting the Israeli occupation and to uncover the brutality of the Israeli state.

As an example, one month of the calendar features an older Palestinian man’s hands and head sticking out of a set of gallows. The gallows are made out of a full Israeli flag, and the man’s face conveys pain and humiliation. The calendar succeeds in presenting such unwavering political metaphors, and the write-up in the beginning of the calendar that describes the Brazilian cartoonist, his intentions, and the context of his art helps to promote a better understanding the goals of the calendar and its art.

It is interesting to imagine other ways this calendar could have been presented. Latuff has a particular style, and the calendar may have benefited from a variety of artists. This would have shown the common elements of cartoons used to bolster Palestinian resistance, rather than focus on one artist’s work, which reinforces a similar aesthetic and specific political priorities. After a whole year of looking at these cartoons, it is easy to imagine how the complicated and profound human aspects of the struggle could be lost amidst the constant righteous outrage elicited by the images of one artist. More artists would have strengthened the depth of the viewers’ understanding.

This calendar certainly isn’t for everyone, and definitely not for fence-sitters regarding Palestinian peoples’ liberation. The World for Palestine 2010 Wall Calendar is strong and powerful in its convictions; hopefully Resistance Art will produce more calendars in the future that follow in this tradition.

Written by: Katrina Forman, December 22nd 2009

Living History: Anarchism in the Kibbutz Movement

admin — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 08:59:00 +0000

By James Horrox

AK Press

“I am neutral on Israel,” I said as I helped lay out the first issue of a women’s newspaper one evening in the early seventies. “After all, I am not Jewish.” Like many critical of nationalism, I was silent. After all, comments on Israeli policy can be matches igniting discussions among friends and co-workers that end in bitterness, charges of anti-Semitism, or in the case of Jewish critics, of being “self-hating Jews.” Frankly, only the bombing of Lebanon in 2006 and the invasion of Gaza last winter pushed me into open criticism of Israeli policies and my first participation in protests. White phosphorus, like napalm, is just plain wrong.

Against the current occupation of Gaza, is there a positive aspect to the project of a Jewish homeland that led to this tragedy? The answer is “yes,” if one returns to early in the last century to the early kibbutz movement. For this, A Living Revolution: Anarchism in the Kibbutz Movement by James Horrox has done so much to make anti-authoritarian thought more widely available.

Horrox begins his history of the kibbutz movement with an introduction to modern anarchism, starting with Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, credited with giving this political philosophy its name. Also, Horrox addresses the often-repeated libel that “anarchist” is synonymous with “terrorist.” Yes, there have been instances of violence, but the violence is miniscule compared to the violent deeds of those committed to other political philosophies, for example, nationalists. The Jewish socialists who dreamed of an egalitarian, nonauthoritarian society were deeply influenced by Peter Kropotkin, the Russian aristocrat who worked with Jewish workers during his exile in England and spoke fluent Yiddish. Who knew? His ideas about the need for a balance of intellectual and physical labor, rejection of the wage system, and holding property in common were ones that inspired those who went to what is now Israel at the beginning of the last century to revitalize a people.

Inspired by him and other thinkers, they founded cooperatives that served the member/owners in all aspects of their lives. Governmental power (Turkish and British) was weak at the time, so the kibbutzim were relatively free to create these self-managed organizations whose members met each other’s needs rather than looking to an authority. Most of the farms of the first wave of immigrants defaulted to hierarchical management and the employment of Arab workers, replicating old patterns from Russia and Eastern Europe. Many efforts at economic self-sufficiency through agriculture were hamstrung by conditions placed on Rothschild family funding, which required that agents manage the farms and supervise the workers and that a single crop be planted. They were dependent on capitalist money. (Think Bill Gates and his predilection for genetically engineered seeds and you get the idea.)

The Second Aliya, the next wave of immigrants were shocked that the old patterns of exploitation were being reconstituted in these first farms, and the newcomers were determined to be self-sufficient. Their farm, Degania, the progenitor of the kibbutz, was successful and its members ran it their way: egalitarian with a mix of crops. The utopian movement they started lasted a lot longer than the Paris Commune and the communes of revolutionary Spain. Even so, Horrox argues, their influence was eroded by the Israeli push for a state and the machinations of the British.

In this unacknowledged history, today’s radical will find cautionary and inspiring stories, even if neither Jewish nor anarchist.

Written by: Frances Chapman, December 20th 2009

A World I Loved: The Story of an Arab Woman

admin — Mon, 11 May 2009 08:30:00 +0000

By Wadad Makdisi Cortas

Nation Books

Nostalgia is front and center in Wadad Makdisi Cortas’ atmospheric memoir of life in Beirut, a war-torn city once belonging to Syria and later, the capital of Lebanon. Born in 1909, Cortas died in 1979, but her impassioned account of a four-decade career as principal of the Ahliah School for Girls touches on themes that remained pertinent throughout the twentieth century—colonialism and the founding of Israel, among them.

Cortas was fiercely committed to the education of girls and sought international examples to prod her students into imagining an array of possibilities for their lives. American journalist Dorothy Thompson gave a talk on campus; so did Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, the first woman president of the UN General Assembly; Bertha Vester, a Jerusalem resident who founded a children’s hospital; and Helen Keller. “Nationalism as a chauvinist ideal never took root in our school,” Cortas writes. “Fairness, humanity, and principles of equal rights all found deep expression in our collective inner life.”

Her descriptions of visits to Palestine before 1917’s Balfour Declaration—in which Lord Arthur Balfour promised to give Palestine to the Zionists—and following the creation of Israel as a Jewish homeland, are gripping. “For Arabs the problem of Palestine was our common denominator,” she writes. Her position was, in part, shaped by Jawaharlal Nehru’s assertion: “When the British declared that they were willing to establish a national home for the Jews in Palestine, Palestine was not a wilderness. There were Arabs and non-Arabs living there, Moslems and Christians… Zionism is a colonial movement. The generous offer of the British was made at the expense of Arabs.”

Cortas’ allies in opposing Israel included Albert Einstein, who favored a bi-national state in Palestine and condemned the violence and terrorism wrought by the Haganah and the Stern Gang against Palestinian villagers. In fact, Cortas consistently sought to include the voices of anti-Zionist Jews in her work, and her outspoken activism always included expression of distress over Jewish persecution in Europe. As the same time, she writes, she felt that it was unjust “that the Arab world was being forced to bear the consequences of Europe’s cruelty.”

Yet despite the efforts of anti-Zionists the world over, in 1949, Israel came into being. Not long after, Lebanon was torn apart by civil war and Cortas’ memoir closes with a searing account of the fighting, 1974-1978. “Hatred breeds hatred,” she concludes, “and love breeds love.”

This simple statement sums up Cortas’ philosophy toward both her students and toward political engagement. An optimist but not a Pollyanna, her example is invigorating. While I wished A World I Loved had provided a bridge between her death and today—an afterward, perhaps, about the Ahliah School and the state of contemporary women’s education in Arab countries—the book is nonetheless fascinating. Full of nuanced historical detail and rich observations, it reintroduces a foremother whose wit and grace help explicate the political quagmires of the twenty-first century.

Written by: Eleanor J. Bader, May 11th 2009

Antarctica

admin — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 17:31:00 +0000

Directed by Yair Hochner

Regent Releasing

For those who don’t know Antarctica is the sophmore effort of Israeli director Yair Hochner. Hochner, like Eytan Fox, is re/defining queer film in Israel. Both his movies, Good Boys (which I found disturbing and heartbreaking) and Antarctica have been the talk of the festival circuit since their releases. Hochner has also been instrumental in founding the first annual LGBTQI Film Festival in Telaviv, now on its third year.

Hochner’s movies are hauntingly beautiful and impossible to view only once. In fact, I have watched Antarctica no less than seven times in the last month and am currently going through unhappy withdrawal now that Here network is no longer screening it. I meant to write a review of the film while it was still available through Here online, but every time I sat down to watch it for the review, I simply got re-enthralled and found it hard to flatten the film out on paper.

Regular readers know that my film reviews try to be as in depth as possible and to avoid gushing because I want them to be useful to independent filmmakers who often link here to promote their films and documentaries. So I think you also know how good I think this movie is given that I’m telling you what a whack-a-mole I’ve been since not having instant access to it.

This trailer really doesn’t do the film justice; it is so much more than your average “who ends up with who” romantic comedy.

The story centers around Omer and Danny and their intersecting lives. When we first meet Danny, he is a newly out dancer with a crush on established dance icon Boaz. Unfortunately for Danny, Boaz “never” sleeps with the same man twice and prefers it if they are gone before he wakes up in the morning. Through a fluke involving a kitty, Omer leaves Boaz’s apartment before they hook up and just in time to set the stage for Danny to move in. Despite this mini-miracle, Danny’s thirty off-screen days with Boaz leave him broken and wounded.

The film begins in earnest three years later, when Danny, now an up and coming star in the dance world, is living with his ex-boyfriend Ronen. Ronen is looking for the real thing while working on a story about alien abductees for an article for the newspaper for which he writes. For some reason, he thinks he’ll find it online even tho he has already found it in the form of the young man he watches, and who watches him, at the library where he does his research. That young man, is Omer.

In the two days before Omer’s thirtieth birthday, Danny and Omer’s lives will intertwine around both Boaz and Ronen as well as Omer’s bestfriend, and Ronen’s internet hook up, Miki. (Miki, played by Yuval Raz, should be recognizable to fans of Good Boys. For people like me, traumatized by what happens to him in that movie and what it costs, it is nice to see him playing someone happy and trauma free.)

In a parallel story, Omer’s sister Shirley tries to pick up and reimagine her own life after canceling her wedding. Shirley works as a waitress in a gay and lesbian bar owned by Michal. In another off-screen romance that predates the timeframe of the film, Shirley and Michal fell in love. Michal wants desperately to create a life with Shirley that centers around her bar, the women who sing amazing folk songs in it, and the men and women who hookup there. While Shirley cares deeply for Michal, her newfound desire is like a door to infinite possibilities that she wants to step through and find herself inside. She explains this to Michal with simple question from which this film derives its title, “Will you go with me to Antarctica?”

This question has so many meanings in the film. On the one hand, it represents the different stages that the characters are in, in their lives. Danny, Shirley, and Miki are all young queer people exploring what it means to be out. Danny’s path is tragic, partially because of his own naivete and partially because he lacks the initiative Shirley and Miki have in the film. Shirley gives up what might be true love to find herself, but she is blessed enough to have Michal, who promises to love her no matter how far she goes or who she becomes. In a way, Shirley and Danny are mirrors of each other, illustrating what could happen if Shirley got stuck in one place instead of trusting herself to grow.

Miki, on other hand, is like neither of them. He is the young, flamboyant, guy who claims to attract everyone he wants and be bored with anyone who wants to much from him. He is shallow and plastic on the outside, but soon discovers that he wants more than retail and clubbing. He isn’t exactly ready for it when it comes, but I think the events in Miki’s life during this film, actually turn on a light that will ultimately compete with the strobe lights still flicking happily to the thump-a-thump in his head.

The older characters in the film are no less sorted when the movie begins. Despite his established writing career, well-traveled soul, and sense of direction in his life, Ronen is still looking for love in all the wrong places. At the very beginning of the film he hooks up with Boaz in a montage of Boaz’s one night stands. While Ronen leaves Biaz’s bed disgusted by his indifference, it does not stop him from hooking up with obviously incompatible Miki over the internet three years later. Though Ronen’s relationship with Miki seems more like a series of odd circumstances, in which they continue to hook up because of bumping into each other or needing companionship to a critical event in the film, Ronen still remains loyal to him even when his heart tells him that Omer is the one.

Omer, on the other hand, prefers his books to real relationships. While he does meet and go home with Boaz, presumable after encountering him at Michal’s bar, he doesn’t actually hookup with him. Their hookup ends abruptly when Omer figures out just how shallow Boaz actually appears to be. And even though he spends his days reciprocating interested glances from Ronen in the library, he continues to go on a series of unsuccessful and dangerous blind dates instead of making a move.

Omer and Danny go out for a while, but both seem to know it is just a relationship of convenience. Danny thinks Omer is too old and stuffy, and his heart is still broken and slightly attached to both Ronen and Boaz; Omer thinks Danny is an experienced kid. Omer’s other blind date is equally fruitless. He meets with abudding serial killer who both belongs in a completely different film and yet is woven seamlessly into Antarctica by Hochner’s pure craft as a director. Like Good Boys, Hochner’s Antarctica refuses to paint a picture of queer community minus the threats that surround it.

Even when Ronen finally does get up the nerve to ask Omer to accompany him on an interview, Omer’s wariness of real life almost stops it from happening. Their exchange in the car about whether or not to go off with strangers both highlights the risk one has to take to find love on the margins and the longing that both of them have for a simple, real, connection. While they go about their lives differently, the symbolism of books, aliens and alienation, and furtive connections surround them both throughout the film.

Boaz, Michal, and Eiten round out the older cast as well-developed but less complex characters. Boaz is the non-commital one who appears to be trying to fill the void that losing his place as the hot, praised, dancing star has left inside him. Michal is the loyal, pillar of the queer community, whose bar provides a relaxed place for the community to find itself and each other. And Eiten is the somewhat snarky man who ultimately ends up playing a pivotal role in Danny and Boaz’s lives.

The question about Antarctica is also at its most basic about the role of travel and displacement in these characters lives. Boaz, Ronen, and Omer have all left Israel at some point in their lives. Having been somewhere else has helped shape the way they see themselves and Israel. Their travel is both a comment on the nation, as a place made up of immigrants and refugees bound by the marginalization of global antisemitism (which in no way is a comment on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict within Israel), and on the queer community which is often made up of immigrants (people who move from rural to urban centers as well as across real and imagined borders) and refugees (people who have been exiled from their families, towns, churches, etc) bound by the marginalization of homophobia. In the latter, the promise of traveling to global queerscapes like London reflect a mythic sense of queer community in which Ronen and Omer will find true love and Boaz perpetual adoration. However, the promise of a queer mecca and the reality of a diverse metropolis ultimately proves that the isolation of immigration and any large queer center are their own complex systems to navigate with no more promise of community than anywhere else. As returnees each of these characters sees the fallacies of the culture in which they live as well as that of the dream of utopia abroad. Danny and Shirley still have this lesson left to learn.

Finally, the question about Antarctica also has do with what we are willing to reach for in our lives. Shirley knows she has something good, but also recognizes that if she does not explore everything that she is capable of being, she will never really know herself. Omer and Danny are so stuck in the smallness that they both almost miss out on love. And Boaz and Miki are so afraid of the transient nature of physical beauty that they push love away to hold on to its plasticity for one more moment. In the midst of their growing fixidity, it takes a woman willing to go public about her alien abduction to show them they too can dare to be honest about their truths and trust that others like them will find and love them.

It is hard to explain the beauty in which these stories unfold. Besides much of the symbolism and well-crafted “simple life” shots, there is a slowness in the pacing of this film that lends itself at once to the sadness of Danny and Michal and the “necessary” process of Ronen and Omer. Hochner’s direction not only keeps some of the characters from degenerating into stereotype, it also allows Antarctica to tackle complex storylines in a way that is deeply in touch with the human condition; yet the film is both light and funny at every turn. Things that should seem out of place, like a man asking if you can fit a body in the refrigerators for sale where Eiten works, or the send up to Divine in the figure of Omer and Shirley’s mother, or the potential alien landing at the end of the film, are all expertly woven into the story by Hochner so that you cannot imagine the film without them. In fact, the “alien landing” is itself the otherside of the metaphor for love in this film.

Hochener’s notes on making the movie highlight the dedication he had to seeing the story not only come to life but to reflect all of the complexities of the characters and events in a way that highlight the magic of the love story at its center. The return of some of his actors from previous work and the commitment of more famous actors also shows how easily others recognize his talent and the power of this script. Everyone involved brought passion and hope to the project that shows in each frame.

Ultimately, Antarctica asks its audience to love themselves and to trust that true love is out there waiting by showing a cast of brilliantly acted characters struggling with doing the same thing. While not everyone ends up sorted by the film’s end, this makes the love story at the center of Antarctica all the more powerful.

When Ronen grabs Omer in the street after Omer runs out of his own dysfunctional birthday party, it is a kind of magic I cannot put into words. In that moment, they save each other with the faith only true love brings us. Not surprisingly, neither of them can articulate what it means to have finally found the home for which they have been yearning. Instead they take turns thanking one another and asking sheepishly “for what?” But we all know why they are grateful. And anyone with a heart is equally so by film’s end.

So thank you Hochner, for giving us such a beautiful love story with characters who are strong enough to recognize and embrace love no matter how long the journey takes. This movie is truly special.

If Antarctica is playing a festival in your area, it is not to be missed.

Written by: P. Susurro, March 23rd 2009