The Blog
The Documentary Oscar nominations are now final: 5 Broken Cameras, The Gatekeepers, How to Survive a Plague, The Invisible War and Searching for Sugar Man. Everyone says the Academy Award will go to Sugar Man but I think 5 Broken Cameras deserves just as much attention. A film about a Palestinian villager filming his daily life while living in the occupied territories, right next to the separation barrier. An exceptional first-hand account of non-violent resistance, the film is often called cinematic political activism. The two directors who shaped the story using Emad Burnat’s hundreds of hours of footage are the Palestinian Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi, an Israeli filmmaker born in Jaffa.
Here is a short piece of their directors’ statement: “We hope that people come to see the film with open minds and without foregone conclusions. When watching a film that deals with such a painful controversy, we know that people tend to shut down. Most of us divide the world into right and wrong, good and bad, Palestinian and Israeli. We immediately take a side that corresponds to our identity, life experience, or ideology, even though these loyalties prevent us from fully experiencing the world. Reality is wonderfully complex, and we become frustrated when people fight to look at it with only one or two filters.”
I found the film to be deeply emotional and sincere. It is one of the most personal film stories I have seen on this conflict (another one I really liked is called To Die in Jerusalem by Hilla Medalia) so if you ever get the chance to see it – don’t miss it!
