Leila Sansour’s film is a personal essay centering on a movement that she spearheaded to protest Israel’s construction of a security wall through her titular hometown, which is traditionally considered the birthplace of Jesus. Sansour draws on archival materials, including home movies, to depict an idyllic childhood in a place where Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived together in harmony, and where her local hero father founded a university recognized as the crowning jewel of Palestinian higher education. Returning to Bethlehem after a long absence, Sansour finds the town fractured by the wall, with some buildings reduced to rubble, and many houses and businesses effectively cut off from contact with their neighbors, while access for the entire area is tightly controlled by security forces, choking off the tourism that is the town’s economic lifeblood. Together with some friends and relatives, she founds the Open Bethlehem movement, enlisting religious leaders, government officials, and supporters around the world (including some influential figures) to declare the town a free zone (they even collaborate on a "Bethlehem passport" declaring the holders’ right to come and go as they please and stay as long as they wish). Combining Sansour’s own personal journey (in a battered old car) with the vicissitudes of the campaign, Open Bethlehem is hardly apolitical, but it is a touching tribute to the dream of Middle Eastern reconciliation. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)
Open Bethlehem
(2017) 90 min. DVD: $350. Bullfrog Films. PPR. SDH captioned. ISBN: 1-941545-92-0. Volume 33, Issue 3
Open Bethlehem
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