When I Saw You

Palestinian filmmaker Annemarie Jacir's film is set in a Jordanian refugee camp following the 1967 Six-Day War, where 11-year-old math whiz Tarek (Mahmoud Asfa) and his mother, Ghaydaa (Ruba Blal), are among the thousands who have fled the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Tarek quietly slips away to search for his missing father but instead discovers a volunteer militia that is in the midst of armed training that is designed to expel Israeli forces from their newly controlled territories. Jacir presents a somewhat romanticized version of the Palestinian guerrilla forces, with young Tarek treated more as a happy mascot than an equal in their ill-fated efforts to push back Israeli military forces. Boasting an astonishing performance by young non-professional Asfa, as an uprooted brainy/bratty youth coming of age in the midst of unprecedented violent upheaval, the film's logic begins to falter somewhat when Ghaydaa joins her son at the military camp, and the tone shifts toward anti-Israeli propaganda. Nonetheless, When I Saw You offers a rarely-considered glimpse of the Palestinian viewpoint of immediate post-Six-Day War life in the Middle East. A strong optional purchase. (P. Hall)