Children of the Stones - Children of the Wall
Director Robert Krieg
Countries Germany
Duration 87 min
Synopsis
A black-and-white photograph, six boys about ten years old posing perkily and flashing victory signs for the camera. That was Bethlehem in the year 1989 during the Palestinian popular uprising and the shooting of Robert Krieg's documentary film "Intifada – On the Way to Palestine". Twenty years later the areas that were supposed to be liberated are enclosed by a wall. Who are the children in the picture? What are their lives like today? Are they alive? Holding the photograph, the film team returns to Bethlehem to search for the boys and to get to know them. The six children, some fathers now, had been too young to join in shaping the Intifada; they offer neither political analyses nor justifications. To this day they live in the old city of Bethlehem and are still in touch with each other. The film team is one of countless others beleaguering the Palestinian territories every day for decades – and perhaps the only one ever to return there. Out of concern, interest and sympathy. The brief encounter between the pose and the pressing of the shutter release, as well as the return of the film team, has forged an almost magic bond of unfamiliarity and trust. The men reminisce, clown around and take the guests along to their workplaces and homes. They discuss the discord in their society, and they briefly become a little gang once more, whose expeditions are inevitably cut short by a wall.
A black-and-white photograph, six boys about ten years old posing perkily and flashing victory signs for the camera. That was Bethlehem in the year 1989 during the Palestinian popular uprising and the shooting of Robert Krieg's documentary film "Intifada – On the Way to Palestine". Twenty years later the areas that were supposed to be liberated are enclosed by a wall. Who are the children in the picture? What are their lives like today? Are they alive? Holding the photograph, the film team returns to Bethlehem to search for the boys and to get to know them. The six children, some fathers now, had been too young to join in shaping the Intifada; they offer neither political analyses nor justifications. To this day they live in the old city of Bethlehem and are still in touch with each other. The film team is one of countless others beleaguering the Palestinian territories every day for decades – and perhaps the only one ever to return there. Out of concern, interest and sympathy. The brief encounter between the pose and the pressing of the shutter release, as well as the return of the film team, has forged an almost magic bond of unfamiliarity and trust. The men reminisce, clown around and take the guests along to their workplaces and homes. They discuss the discord in their society, and they briefly become a little gang once more, whose expeditions are inevitably cut short by a wall.