Make Hummus Not War (Trevor Graham, 2012) Australia, UK, USA, Palestine, Lebanon, Israel

Reviewed by Simon Rosen. Viewed at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2014

Make Hummus not War is a documentary about where Hummus originated from so the filmmaker Trevor Graham travels around the Middle East to find out where hummus originated from and share his point of view on the matter. The documentary also pick up the issues the Middle East has with each other, with the Palestine and the Israeli but it is a documentary with an easier view on the conflict by using hummus.

This is the only documentary I was able to watch on the festival and I’m honored to actually be one of those that actually got to meet the filmmaker Trevor Graham after the screening for a Q&A. This is also the very first film that I saw at the film festival, so knowing that there would be a Q&A made me excited. The Q&A was needed because the documentary left me with a lot of questions. For an example didn’t really like that he mixed in his on personal life and experience in the documentary right after you got you see a serious interview about the conflicts they have in the middle east. But I did realize why he did what he did, the documentary ties up better with his story too.

I feel that the filmmaker is trying to find a good balance of serious and funny in the documentary but I just feel that it doesn’t really work but that’s just me, I did however enjoy watching the documentary, it was interesting but it was also at the same time boring sometimes. And that is why I think he deiced to mix in his personal life and attachments to the hummus. Without having Trevor Graham’s stories the documentary would just be about the hummus in the Middle East and having a 77 min long documentary only about that would just be boring.

There is one thing that is certain and that is that I have to try Hummus now! (btw I did and it was really delicious) I don’t think that I would recommend the documentary to anyone but I feel that I do not like it but maybe others do. It’s not a bad documentary it’s is still interesting to watch but it was just not for me.