The Wanted 18

A strange incident from the first Intifada of the late 1980s forms the basis for this imaginative semi-comic documentary by Paul Cowan and Amer Shomali. In 1988, a small Palestinian community in the occupied territories purchased 18 cows from an Israeli farmer in order to produce their own milk. As interviewees recount, the townspeople, who were unfamiliar with cattle, could barely herd them into pens—let alone milk them properly. Yet ownership was seen as both a form of protest and an act of financial independence. Soon, the Israeli army became involved, declaring the bovines a security risk and sending patrols out to find them, which led to the villagers going to great lengths to hide their livestock. The Wanted 18 emphasizes the patent absurdity of the affair, using stop-motion animation to include the perspective of four of the cows, who verbalize their supposed hopes and fears as the stand-off continues. But there is also an undercurrent of tragedy as the tale is situated within the context of the wider Palestinian resistance. Townsmen are repeatedly dragged in for questioning; a young activist dies, shot by an Israeli patrol; and embittered village leaders feel betrayed by the PLO's abrupt signing of the 1993 Oslo I Accord. The film closes with a recently-born calf escaping into the desert, where the narrator—a writer telling the story in the form of a fable—searches for the animal, which has taken on mythic properties. The Wanted 18 may be somewhat surreal, but it effectively encapsulates the mixture of foolishness and pain at the center of Israeli-Palestinian relations. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)