Educational Media Reviews Online

This film tells the story of Lyd through Palestinian eyes. It's interspersed with animations, imagining an alternate history-- what the city could be like, had a different path been chosen back in 1948. The alternate history shows a happy, vibrant city that welcomes all faiths.

The film's creative imagining of peaceful, prosperous, and tolerant Lyd is inspiring and hopeful. At the same time, the film undercuts the effort to get there by ignoring the Jewish side of the story. Jews do speak in the film, but they are there only to confirm the horrors of the civilian casualties in the mosque, and to speak about the ensuing expulsion of most of Lyd's Arab population in 1948.

The Nakba comes up a lot, but they never mention the assault on the Jewish refugees that preceded it. They often mention that Jews are now living in their former homes in Lyd but seem to have genuinely forgotten that Europeans live in the homes of the Jews they murdered, with no right of return. They assert a Palestinian identity for Lyd going back 6,000 years, but in Roman times at least, Lyd was entirely Jewish. The film's vision of peace and coexistence is very attractive but seems unlikely to be realized until the truths from both sides can be acknowledged.

Recommended as an insight into the Palestinian mind-set; would benefit by combination with a source from the Jewish perspective.

Awards:
Jury Award for Arab Feature-Length Documentary and FIPRESCI Award from the Film Critics Association, Amman International Film Festival 2023

Published and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. Anyone can use these reviews, so long as they comply with the terms of the license.