Narrative, 2008
Director: Eran Riklis
France, Germany, Israel/ Arabic, Hebrew with subtitles
106 minutes
Nominated for 7 Israeli Academy Awards, a battle over a lemon grove becomes a parable for the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. When a Palestinian widow Salma, played in an award-winning performance by Hiam Abass of The Visitor, finds her beloved lemon grove, a family legacy, threatened with destruction as a security threat when an Israeli defense minister moves in next door, she fights back with the help of a young Palestinian attorney (Ali Suliman) in a battle that takes the case all the way to the Israeli High Court.
This story is slowly paced but the performances are captivating. It is also another example of this festival showing very controversial subject matter to its base community. The heroine that your heart goes out to is definitely the Palestinian woman about to lose all that she knows in a seemingly unfair, biased, and almost hopeless situation. Though this is balanced somewhat by the portrayal of the defense minister's wife who grows to genuinely feel for her plight to the point that it endangers her own marriage. Above and beyond that, it is the classic battle of an individual's rights versus those of the state, particularly where said individual is a minority.
Lucy Cruell