Life Sentences

The title of this fascinating documentary by Nurit Kedar and Yaron Shani is derived from the life of Fawzi al Nimer, an Israeli Arab sentenced to 27 life sentences for 22 terrorist actions that he undertook following the Six-Day War. Nimer was later released as part of the 1985 Jibril prisoner exchange and went on to become an important figure in the PLO. But Nimer is not the focus here, appearing only briefly via home movies and stills and then shown near death in Gaza (his early story is related by his younger brother). This prologue leads to the real subject—Nimer's son, who calls himself Nimer Ahmed. The elder Nimer had married a Jewish woman before 1967, and the couple had two children who—after their father's arrest—were largely ostracized by both Jewish and Arab communities. Their mother eventually took them to Montreal, where the boy rejected the Orthodox Judaism that both his mother and his sister (neither participated in this film) eventually embraced. Ultimately, Ahmed returned to the Middle East, married an Arab cousin, and became a dad himself. In a series of painfully revealing interviews, Ahmed speaks of his tormented youth and the psychological toll that being caught between the two warring aspects of his ancestry has had on him. Life Sentences serves up a powerful personal tale of the devastation wrought by the Arab-Israeli conflict, as well as a reminder of how the sins of the father can be visited upon the son. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)