Inch'Allah

I watched it this evening in Montreal. The story describes how a Canadian humanitarian doctor tries to reconcile her life in both sides of the border between Israel and Palestine. The scenario is very good. Events occur smoothly in a straight forward way. The performance of Evelyne Brochu (the humanitarian doctor in the movie) is perfect. She was able to transmit the emotions experienced by the character in a powerful way. I liked the non judging aspect of the movie. On can see both sides as victims in certain way. My overall experience was very good. Both the actress "Evelyne Brochu" and the director "Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette" gonna be in my watch list from now on.

The woman leading the characters, a doctor from Quebec, Canada, is a sensitive, life- loving person, who has no prejudice, and develops friends on both sides of the Israeli- Palestinian border. The brutality of everyday life in this war zone, thus weighs heavily upon her psyche. She sees the people on both sides of the border, as valuable human beings, whereas most of those around her are tragically, held by fear and hatred towards the other side. This gives a fairly good view of the tense situation, that exists in this area and the life of little hope that exists, particularly in the "conquered" Arab region. It's a valuable look behind the superficiality of the media, towards this troubled land, through the eyes of someone with investment in both sides. This is cinema for grown-ups, where the "bang-bang" has real human consequences.

This powerful film is good, haunting, disturbing. But the Chloe character is fake, in- authentic and sad. Putting a white coat on a character does not make them a physician. Chloe as played is weak. There comes with education and experience in medicine an authority that is entirely lacking in this Chloe. This woman does not convey comfort with the bodies of the women she serves? Nor does she talk to them as if she has their best interests at heart. She repeatedly shuffles them in and out of clinics as if they are cattle, not humans.

A physician in her place would be a passionate advocate for all life; she would be a feminist. She would fight for life. But in the scenes wherein a child and baby die in her presence there is no attempt to save a life. She even states "I have blood on my shoes". Not: " I have blood on my hands". She lets a baby die without any attempt to breathe life into it.

Bizarre especially given the choice she makes by the end to truly have blood on her hands.

I went to the movie to see the choice a physician has made in extreme circumstances, but was met with a character that in no way understood or lived as a physician. Such a sad failure for a movie that could shock if written and acted as the story demanded

I can't believe some of the negative comments about this film. If ever you want to get some enlightenment about what it is like to live in or near the occupied territories then you must see this film. It is a really powerful film that has a subtle,realistic and non-judgmental narrative. The film does not try to justify terrorism attacks (as another reviewer suggested) but rather gives an insight into how normal nice everyday people can -because of a combination and build up of horrendous circumstance - feel such hatred towards "the other side". And when it seems like there is no future for themselves they are driven to commit acts of atrocity. The film doesn't try to say this is OK - it simply provides an insight - that is both brutal and poignant - into how and why these horrible events can unfold.

I thought the acting was brilliant. I felt a connection with all the lead characters. The actress playing the doctor was in most scenes and she did an amazing job and was very believable. The scene stealer was the young Arab boy who was a charmer and formed an odd bond with the Doctor.

It is a film I can't stop thinking about and in my mind that makes it a very special movie.

I saw this film at the Berlinale 2013 film festival, where is was part of the Panorama section. My overall impression when leaving the theater was that it had the effect on me as if it was a guided tour through the refugee camps and Israeli border areas. We knew in the abstract sense about checkpoints in between to let people travel from one side to the other, the soldiers who are assigned to guard those border posts, people wanting to pass being humiliated, assaults in public places by for instance suicide bombers, and the existence of refugee camps. For many years this is and remains newspaper and TV material.

We observe a world that is very different from our quiet and reasonably safe lives. We implicitly see and understand the aftermath of assaults, inevitably leading to posting guards and ID checks in public places, augmented with random house searches. What most impressed me were armed people all around carrying large machine guns, also in the role of an average bus passenger wanting to get from A to B, and that no one seems to find those arms in public places disconcerting.

It was a good idea to make the woman doctor (Chloe) into a single reference point to provide for some skeleton story line, otherwise this film would be no more than loose fragments (like holiday photo's) of how people live there. There was no real narrative that I could recognize as such, which made me wonder in the beginning what it was all about. We see an Israeli woman (Ava) hating her job guarding one of the checkpoints. We see a women (Rand) sifting through the rubbish dump, but does not want a bed lying there because "settlers have (bleep) F**ked in it". We see Chloe arranging a day pass that allows a family to visit their former house, now only visible as a ruin. And so on. Chloe is the one linking these persons together, hence my idea that a guided tour was the prime purpose of this film.

Of course, for Chloe as a white doctor and without roots on either side, it is relatively easy to travel around. And as a doctor, she helps people by definition with their problems. But do not think that people are thankful for her efforts. She remains an outsider in spite of her doing good things on both sides. In the end, for example, after having failed to rescue a newborn baby (not her fault), the mother blames her for being too late and thus causing the death of her child. The mother also became abusive and called her all sorts of nasty names, like whore, all of which was very undeserved given the circumstances.

All in all, this movie was not as involving for me as could have been. Maybe I expected too much, being prejudiced by the fact that it received 3rd prize for the Berlinale Panorama audience award. It apparently was able to arouse the interest of a significant number of viewers. However, I was not that much impressed, in spite of the superb acting performances and revealing close-by shots of the local settings. I also think that the film presupposed too much background information from the audience, about the long standing issues around Israeli, Palestinians, settlers and refugee camps. Plus that I have had problems for many many years to take a stand in this controversy. But I obviously am an exception and alone in this.