Shadya

Shadya Zoabi is a 17-year old Muslim girl from a small Arab village in northern Israel. She is smart, sexy and a kick-ass karate champion. Her brothers are against her karate career, but her father supports her despite pressures from the community to conform to standard roles for Muslim women. This excellent coming-of-age documentary explores the relationships between Shadya, her sister Waed and their Jewish Israeli teammates. What is it like to have dual identities--Palestinian/Israeli citizen and Muslim woman/karate champ? Shadya’s internal struggles are dramatically captured when she competes for Israel at the karate world championship in South Africa, where tension arises between her Israeli team and their Palestinian opponents.