Promises

If you have ever wondered how to gain at least some understanding of the convoluted, protracted and intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict, watch this documentary film. You will learn its basic history, but perhaps more importantly you will learn about the deeply human impulses that drive that history, human impulses as they are experienced and narrated by seven children interviewed for this film project—Israeli and Palestinian, extremist and conciliatory, passive observers and political militants, boys and girls. A child's perspective, it turns out, touches the viewer very deeply, for these kids have siblings who have been killed and parents jailed without formal charges. In an especially moving sequence, the children meet together in an exchange of food, games, friendship, opinions, tears, and feelings of both hope and futility. The final frames show an Arab mother and a Jewish father in a maternity ward standing next to each other, each embracing their newborn baby. The producers edited over 170 hours of original interviews down to 107 minutes for this incredible film. In Arabic, Hebrew, and English, with English subtitles.