BRIDGE OVER THE WADI
(Gesher al Havadi)

Barak Heymann, Tomer Heymann
Israel 2006 | 57 Min. | BetaSP, OmeU

In Sep­tem­ber 2004, in Kara vil­lage, the first Jewish-Arab school locat­ed within an Arab vil­lage, has opened. 100 chil­dren, half Arab and half Jewish, study at this school. The school gives equal rep­re­sen­ta­tion to both lan­guages, reli­gions and cul­tures. For a year and a half the film­mak­er fol­lowed close­ly the par­ents, who were able to estab­lish this school despite all the dif­fi­cul­ties on the way. What seemed like an impos­si­ble mis­sion, given the social and polit­i­cal atmos­phere in Israel since the rising of the second Intifa­da and the Octo­ber 2000 events, has soon become an opti­mistic real­i­ty that brings hope during hard times for both Arabs and Jews. How­ev­er, the ten­sion and dis­agree­ment did not dis­ap­pear the day the school opened. On the con­trary; every day poses new chal­lenges to the teach­ers, par­ents and chil­dren. Every­one relat­ed to this school goes through a deep and mean­ing­ful process which is at the core of this movie. The school serves as a crit­i­cal turn­ing point for each and every­one of the char­ac­ters we follow. They find them­selves having to deal with basic exis­ten­tial thoughts that do not per­tain strict­ly to the Arab-Jewish con­flict, but also to con­flicts about male vs. female, reli­gious vs. sec­u­lar, par­ents vs. chil­dren, and more.