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This is what the real life of the boys and girls who went out to the knife intifada looks like

"Children," the film in question by Ada Ushpiz on HOT 8, presents life in the Palestinian Authority through the point of view of teenagers, especially girls, and especially those who were involved in the knife intifada.

The result does not try to provoke "Jenin Jenin" style storms, and yet it is to be hoped that it will receive attention

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• Channel 8

• The Intifada of the Individuals

Avner Shavit

Monday, 18 January 2021, 00:00

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From the movie "Kids" (HOT 8)

Over the past decade, Israeli feature film has almost ceased to engage in conflict.

This happened for a variety of reasons: institutional pressure, internal censorship, and also commercial reasons: the right-wing audience, which is the majority, has lost faith in films on the subject, but even the hedonistic left-wing public is not interested in them because it is busy with Netflix.

Besides, the subject has also lost its international appeal, because the world has moved on, and because of the politics of identities are no longer as enthusiastic as ever from a film that dared to make a Jew (and usually a white man) on Palestinian society.

On the other hand, the conflict has returned to occupy the center of the stage in the local docu-world - perhaps because it is based on guerrilla budgets and has no commercial partnerships, and perhaps because its affiliation with the press requires its creators to be more closely connected to reality.

In any case, when it comes to awards and honors, the most notable films in the last two years were "Leah Tzemel, Lawyer" and "Mirror", which dealt with the charged subject, and now "Children" by Ada Ushpiz, who won the Documentary Film Award at the Film Festival a month ago Jerusalem (when the director of "Leah Tzemel" also sits on the jury - that's how it is, everything stays in the family).

Like "Leah Tzemel, Lawyer" and "Mirror", "Children" was also produced by HOT 8, aired last night and is available on the channel's VOD.

His name is beautiful but a little misleading, because it would have been more correct to call him "boys", or even more correct - "girls".

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Winner of the Doku Award at the Jerusalem Festival.

From "Children" (Photo: PR, HOT 8)

The film is unusual for several reasons: both because it presents life in the Palestinian Authority not from an adult perspective, but from the point of view of characters around middle school age, and also because most of them are girls.

It is not common to see a film made in Israel that focuses on Israeli girls, so one that makes the voices of Palestinian black girls?

This is even more rare.

Most of those documented in the film were involved in one way or another in what became known as the Knife Intifada (or the Individual Intifada), led by the man who over time turns out to be his protagonist - Dima al-Wawi, 12, who was arrested after trying to enter a Jewish settlement with a knife. Who did not use it because she eventually realized she was incapable of it.

Ushpiz, despite being the representative of the other side and a white woman from Hod Hasharon, managed to develop intimacy with al-Wawi, her family and the other objects of documentation here.

The feeling all along is that we are sitting in their living room, or in any other scene of occurrence described here, and the presence of the camera is almost never felt.

To the credit of the director, it should also be said that she was well aware of what the story was about - and it's certainly not herself, who for a moment is not pushed into the picture.

The film illustrates life in the Palestinian Authority on various levels - from clashes with IDF forces to family conversations, from classroom chats to chatting between two girls on the bed in one of their bedrooms. Listening to dialogues can also teach about the confusion sometimes created by mixing life In Arabic and Hebrew, for example when the father of one of the families slaps a soldier with a syntax he invented himself - "I was a man even before your mother gave birth to you", and when he explains to his son, who returned from a slight detention, that what he ate between bars was the unique Israeli invention known as flakes.

Interview with Ada Ushpiz

The beauty is that Ushpiz eludes the "look at them, they are just like us" cliché.

Along the way, her film emphasizes the difference, uniqueness, limitations, distortion and sometimes even the absurdity of life in the Palestinian Authority.

In this respect, the most fascinating scenes to me take place in the classroom, and especially in the citizenship class, which has a built-in irony - because how do you teach the citizenship of children who are not citizens of any country?

Although this is what people are looking for today, Ushpiz also refrains from creating provocations in shekels.

The film is obviously very critical, but is in no hurry to cross the boundaries that will lead to the Hague Tribunal or the Lod District Court.

The first criticism of him in one of the local media was terribly sarcastic and stated "We are now busy stealing taps in Dubai. If you want our attention, give him a punch in the stomach."

The director does not dance according to these dictates.

She does not pat anyone on the back, but in her nonviolent approach, she does not seek slaps either.

There is no desire here to shake and stir, even if the price is to give up storms in a cup of tea and the free PR that comes with them.

Instead, the director seeks to film bits of reality and make voices, which usually have an outcry, but sometimes also a compromise.

We live in very strange days, when the prime minister puts up posts in Hebrew, as if the last decade has been erased as if it were not, and on the other hand - the Israeli public, preoccupied with its troubles, has simply lost all interest in hearing the other's voice.

In such a context, it is tempting to use the most disgusting call of all, "Every Israeli must see this film," but in my experience, such didactic sentences have the opposite effect.

If they were born on the other side, they would already be regular guests on the panels.

From "Children" (Photo: PR, HOT 8)

It is also tempting to use an equally disgusting and disgusting sentence, which I used in the past for my iniquities - "The film provides a fascinating glimpse into ...".

But such a statement implies that it is not really a film, but an anthropological folklore.

It is important to clarify, then, that although "children" also has sociological and political value, it is cinema for everything.

Ushpiz and her editor, Neta Brown, managed to take hundreds of hours of raw materials and turn them into a coherent, flowing, unappealing but beautiful work, also thanks to the photography of Danor Glazer.

The director also does a good job of understanding which situations are worth lingering over and which ones to focus on.

"Children" would not have gone so far without Dima al-Wawi's charisma, that if she had been lucky enough to be born on the other side of the barricade, she would have been made a tic-tac-toe and a star on various panels.

Hundreds of hours of raw materials became a coherent creation.

From "Children" (Photo: PR, HOT 8)

A week ago we were informed of the death of Michael Upted, who became famous mainly thanks to the illustrious and groundbreaking documentary project in which he took several British children of different classes and documented them every seven years.

In this spirit, it will be fascinating to see Ushpiz return to visit al-Wawi and her friends in the future as well.

At the rate at which things are going here, it will not be surprising to find that we have all stayed in the exact same place.

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