Part of Spotlight: Diversity in Israel

Director Shai Carmeli Pollak will be at the screenings.

Bilin My Love (Wolgin Award for Documentary Film, Jerusalem International Film Festival 2006) is a dynamic point-of-view documentary about the struggle of the Palestinian village of Bilin, in the West Bank, over its land. The Israeli government divided the village as part of the construction of the separation barrier, and appended half of the land to a neighboring Jewish settlement, Mod’in.

Israeli director Shai Carmeli Pollak did not initially come to Bilin as a filmmaker, but as part of Activists Against the Wall, an international peace activists’ organization. Armed with his camera, for over a year he participated in the nonviolent resistance along with the Palestinian villagers and international activists, while capturing confrontations between protestors and the Israeli army and police. His intrusive and investigative camerawork reveals a complex reality and raises difficult and important questions about human rights.

With stunning guerilla aesthetics, the film depict the struggles of two Bilin residents: Mohamed, a member of the village’s local committee protesting the wall, and Wagee, farmer and father of ten, who is losing the majority of his land to the wall. They provide intimate, personal insights into the Palestinian side of the story. Shedding light on this fraught aspect of the Middle East conflict, Bilin My Love is an important documentary about the cooperative efforts of Palestinians, international human rights activists and Israeli Jews who feel morally compelled to protest their government’s policies in the West Bank.

—Pnina Halfon Lang

Sponsored by a festival friend honoring Grace Paley (1923-2007), activist and writer: speaking truth to power with compassion, moral courage, humor, and fierce love of peace and social justice.

Co-presented by American Friends Service Committee, Jewish Voice for Peace and Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of California, Berkeley