![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.haaretz.com\/polopoly_fs\/1.592052.1400694868!\/image\/2349077637.jpg_gen\/derivatives\/landscape_640\/2349077637.jpg\")
<\/p>\nReviewed by Erik Johansson at metro 4. Viewed at Santa Barbara Film Festival 2015.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Israel-Palestina conflict is a complex kind, at least to solve. It has its origin all the way back to the mid 20th century. It’s a conflict between a Jewish state surrounded by many Islamic states, where one of them is Palestine. In 1948 it was announced that the state of Palestine would be divided into a Islamic part and a Jewish part. The Jews accepted it, the arabs did not accept it. Therefore, seven arabic armies attacked the Jewish state to win back their land. Surprisingly the Jewish state survived. This happened again in 1967 when the dictator of Egypt “Gamal Abdel Naser” said “We are now going to extinguish Israel”, whereas the Palestinians joined him. Israel, who is about the size of New Jersey or El Salvador has together with Palestine created the biggest conflict in the world. While top politicians try to solve the situation, people like Samar and Linor are trying to live the normal kind of life you deserve as an innocent 12 year-old.<\/p>\n
The story starts of with the two girls meeting online. Linor is a Jewish resident in the religious city of Tlamim, but was born in the Gaza strip. Samar lives in the city of Lod, a city with a lot of crime and poverty, located 67 km from Tlamim. Her Islamic family consists of her Arab Israeli mother and her Palestinian father who lives in the occupied territories. Something starting as a school project where the girls get to chat to each other evolves into a face to face meeting.<\/p>\n
We get an insight in the conservative mentality of the two parts. And how the older generations propagates the younger ones without letting them create their own opinions first. To show this, here is a statement from Linor’s grandmother to Linor before her meeting with Samar: “Once you start meeting muslims in reality they start pulling you into their dirty world, be careful. There is always this sting between Jews and Muslims”. While we get to see this, we also get to met her friends who argues “We’re all Gods children, we’re brothers and alike” which Linor, propagated by her grandmother, tries to argue against.<\/p>\n
By watching “Almost Friends” you can tell that it was filmed in a “cinema verite” kind of way (direct cinema). Sometimes the sound and footage is not technically perfect. However, from the loss of steady set up filming they gained a genuine story on tape to show the world, which in my opinion is much more valuable in a documentary of this kind. The cinematographer uses effects in the sounds, for example making the sound deeper to create an “inside head effect” that gives you an impression that someone is thinking, the girls before their first meeting in this case.<\/p>\n
The documentary highlights the challenge of breaking irrational religious norms or even laws for the price of conservative narrow minded people getting offended. To see through the nationality and religion and instead finding the beauty from the character of the person. A girl is a 12 year old where ever she is from and shouldn’t have to deal with these irrational rules but rather be shown that love and unity can be created everywhere. To show her that should be everyones responsibility. Which is why “Almost friends” is a\u00a0piece of truth that everyone should see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Reviewed by Erik Johansson at metro 4. Viewed at Santa Barbara Film Festival 2015. The Israel-Palestina conflict is a complex kind, at least to solve. It has its origin all the way back to the mid 20th century. It’s a conflict between a Jewish state surrounded by many Islamic states, where one of them is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36900,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,255],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films","category-santa-barbara-film-festival-2015"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/36900"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33388\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}