Where Olive Trees Weep

Where Olive Trees Weep

2DCS12
Director:Maurizio Benazzo, Zaya Benazzo
Premiere:31. January 2025
Length:104 minutes
Genre:Documentary

TICKETS CAN ONLY BE PURCHASED AT THE BOX OFFICE

Director: Maurizio Benazzo, Zaya Benazzo

The documentary Where the Olive Trees Weep provides the background to the current crisis in Israel and Palestine and explores the lives of the people Maurizio and Zaya Benazzo met on their journey through the occupied West Bank in 2022.

The main protagonists of the stories include Palestinian journalist and therapist Asher Darwish, civil activist Ahed Tamimi, who was imprisoned as a minor for slapping an Israeli soldier afterwards, after he shot her cousin in the head with a projectile, and Israeli journalist Amira Hass, who is the only Israeli journalist who has lived in the occupied West Bank for a long time and has also lived in Gaza, about which she wrote the book Drinking the sea in Gaza. We will also see how, today, Canadian physician Dr Gabor Maté, who narrowly escaped the Holocaust as a child in Hungary, offers trauma treatment to a group of Palestinian women who were tortured in Israeli prisons.

The ancient landscape bears deep scars as it witnesses the brutal reality of confiscation of ancestral lands, expulsion, imprisonment, house demolitions, water deprivation and denial of basic human rights. Through the veil of oppression, however, we glimpse the perseverance and deep roots that have helped the Palestinian people overcome decades of darkness and shattered lives. This is epitomised by the ancient Palestinian olive trees, which, though uprooted by the occupiers, are planted again and again by the Palestinians.

This story exposes the humanity of the oppressed while grappling with the question: What causes the oppressor to be so callously blind to the consequences of his own actions?

After the film, you can look forward to a discussion with the main protagonists, which will be held in English.

Length: 104 min

Year: 2024
Local premiere date: 31. January 2025

Country of origin:

  • United states of America

TICKETS CAN ONLY BE PURCHASED AT THE BOX OFFICE

Director: Maurizio Benazzo, Zaya Benazzo

The documentary Where the Olive Trees Weep provides the background to the current crisis in Israel and Palestine and explores the lives of the people Maurizio and Zaya Benazzo met on their journey through the occupied West Bank in 2022.

The main protagonists of the stories include Palestinian journalist and therapist Asher Darwish, civil activist Ahed Tamimi, who was imprisoned as a minor for slapping an Israeli soldier afterwards, after he shot her cousin in the head with a projectile, and Israeli journalist Amira Hass, who is the only Israeli journalist who has lived in the occupied West Bank for a long time and has also lived in Gaza, about which she wrote the book Drinking the sea in Gaza. We will also see how, today, Canadian physician Dr Gabor Maté, who narrowly escaped the Holocaust as a child in Hungary, offers trauma treatment to a group of Palestinian women who were tortured in Israeli prisons.

The ancient landscape bears deep scars as it witnesses the brutal reality of confiscation of ancestral lands, expulsion, imprisonment, house demolitions, water deprivation and denial of basic human rights. Through the veil of oppression, however, we glimpse the perseverance and deep roots that have helped the Palestinian people overcome decades of darkness and shattered lives. This is epitomised by the ancient Palestinian olive trees, which, though uprooted by the occupiers, are planted again and again by the Palestinians.

This story exposes the humanity of the oppressed while grappling with the question: What causes the oppressor to be so callously blind to the consequences of his own actions?

After the film, you can look forward to a discussion with the main protagonists, which will be held in English.

Year: 2024
Local premiere date: 31. January 2025

Country of origin:

  • United states of America