Arna’s Children

A heart-rending, quietly angry and often revelatory consideration of how an intelligent and concerned child might become a ‘martyr’ warrior or suicide bomber. Filmed over some years, it introduces committed Israeli Arna Mer Khermis, whose husband was Palestinian, and the theatre group she founded in Jenin refugee camp, later carried on by her son. Several of the local kids, encouraged to attend and express in performance their anger and pain at the ongoing Occupation and their direct personal losses, are followed, with their actions as adults charted in later footage. Clearly illustrating how extreme social conditions can push some to feelthey have no alternative left but armed struggle, the film is a desperately sad indictment of an intolerable reality and a moving elegy to young lives destroyed.