Israel

An Orthodox school is divided in half for a new secular school. The two institutions must coexist in a shared playground, where their conflicting identities are put to the test.

Grierson award-winning director Iris Zaki enters the heart of Tekoa, an Israeli settlement in the West-Bank,and sits down to talk to the locals. Though fearful at first of the left-wing invader, settlers from various backgrounds gradually open up to her. Their honest, surprising and sometimes funny conversations offer a fresh take on Israeli reality from both sides of the Green Line.

10/5  10:00

Unes is paralyzed after a massive stroke. He lies in bed in the family’s living room, watching the live feed from security cameras installed at the perimeter of his home – a matter of protection after several assaults on his family. “We are guilty, we’ve brought shame on ourselves,” this is how Unes summarizes decades of collaboration with Israeli security forces and helping Jews to buy land from Palestinians.

10/5  10:00

Miriam El Kwader, a Bedouin wedding photographer and mother of seven, lives in an unknown and neglected Negev village. Through her camera lens, she reveals the most distressing issue polygamy in Bedouin’s marriage system . This is the story of three, relatively educated and independent women, trying to survive, each in their own way in their world – a life of polygamy. One is a “first wife”, living in constant fear that her husband will bring home a second wife. The other two are pushed into marrying already married men, and become “second wives”, forced to cooperate within a structure they despise or are afraid of. This film presented the family tragedies and injustices of the social structures. It also highlighted the strength and survival of the victims.

In the picturesque Israeli Negev desert lays the Bedouin village of El-Sayed. It has the largest percentage of deaf people in the world. In El-Sayed deafness is not a handicap. Through the generations a unique sign language has evolved making it the most popular language in this rare society that accepts deafness as natural as life itself. The villages tranquility is interrupted by Salims decision to change his deaf son’s fate and make him a hearing person using the Cochlear Implant Operation.