Gan Eden Avud

Paradise (Fureidis in Arabic), a small fishing village overlooking the Mediterranean, is one of the few Arab communities that remained on the Israeli coastline after the 1948 war. It became politically and culturally isolated as Jewish settlements sprung up around it. As the director, Ebitsam Mara’ana, a Palestinian Israeli citizen, attempts to recreate the history of the village where she was born in 1975, she is met with a wall of “fear and silence”. The film follows Ebitsam on her search for her childhood hero, Suuad Genam, who was born in Paradise in 1957 and who dared to challenge the village’s tendency for political inaction. She was a militant with a PLO group in the 1970’s and was imprisoned and tortured by Israeli security forces. She now lives in the UK as a lawyer and is married to a British high school teacher. Ebitsam hopes Suuad will be able to answer the fundamental questions that plague her about her identity. How can she combine her longing for freedom and modernity with her attachment to her home community which offers so little possibilities for women? But there is no easy answer to Ebitsam’s questions. (DOK.fest München)