Film of the Week #52
April 13th - 20th 2022
Arna’s Children (2004)
Documentary, 1h 24m
Yussef committed a suicide attack in 2001. Ashraf was killed by the Israeli army in 2002. Alla led a group of resistance fighters to his death in 2003. The director, who documented them as promising child actors in a theatre group he founded with his mother Arna, returns to Jenin Refugee Camp in April 2002, to see what happened to the children he knew and loved
Directors: Juliano Mer-Khamis & Danniel Danniel
Sound: Alla Khouri & Rani Nentzel
Editing: Obbe Verwer & Govert Janse
Featuring: Arna Mer, Ala El-Sabagr, Zakaria Zubeidi, Daud Zubeidi, Majdi Shadi, Haifa Staiti, Nidal Swetti, Yussef Swetti, Mahmoud Kaneri, Khairia Fakhri and Ashraf Abu-Alheji.
“With its understated irony and detached pathos, with its seamless interweaving of past and present and of hope and reality, Arna’s Children astounds and devastates even those numbed by the subject’s litany of suffering.”