Nadia's Friends

Filmmaker Chanoch Zeevi's grandparents were part of the founding generation of Kfar Haroeh, an educational experiment of the religious Zionist movement that aimed to create “the ultimate future generation” by bringing together children from different cultural and religious backgrounds to form a homogenous model of a Zionist Jew in Jerusalem. Now, at age 40, Zeevi sets out to track down his schoolmates from the class of 1980, discovering along the way that the school's celebrated “melting pot” has failed, as most of his classmates no longer embrace the school's founding principles. Zeevi interviews his former principal, an admired leader who cautiously suggests that a more radical Israel has led to a fundamental disregard for the basic humanistic and cultural precepts advanced at Kfar Haroeh. Narrated by Zeevi, the heart of Nadia's Friends lies in discussions and interviews with former classmates—in particular Nadia, the only Arab member of the school. As an Arab Muslim, Nadia represents the lost ideal of the “melting pot” and sense of tolerance, both of which have been pushed aside by political and religious extremism. As the interviewees reflect upon a specific time and place where there existed little sense of separateness between Arab or Jew, religious or non-religious, right-wing or left-wing, Zeevi hopes that Israel will one day learn to fully embrace diversity. Aud: C, P. (A. Cantú)