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Press for Another Road Home Danae Elon's "Another Road Home" charts the filmmaker's search for Musa Obeidallah, the Palestinian man her parents hired to take care of her in Israel for the first 20 years of her life. Her quest leads her from her current home in New York to Paterson, N. J., and from there to the West Bank. Fascinating in its reticence, honest, well-intentioned exploration involving two families, Another Road Home fearlessly emerges with a far different picture than was originally envisioned. The documentary, already making a name for itself on fest tour, might attract limited urban play before migrating onto cable. For Elon, pic reps a departure from her earlier oeuvre
("Never Again, Forever," "Wild Mint"), less in its subject
matter than in its personal slant. It soon becomes clear, as she quizzes her
own parents (now living in Italy) about her upbringing, that what drives her
pilgrimage is discovering why Musa, a Palestinian paid to raise her, felt so
much more like a father than her own brilliant but distant progenitor (Danae is
the daughter of famous left-wing Israeli historian and social critic Amos
Elon). Having lost touch with Musa, Danae travels to Paterson, N.J., in search of his children (Musa used the money he earned tending to her to send his own offspring to safety in the States). Danae at first has trouble locating the Obeidallahs, mainly because, though she remembers Musa's kids from her youth in Israel, she doesn't know how to spell their name. Finally, she tracks down the sons whom she visited as a child, now grown up with children of their own. They welcome her warmly, yet their memories are very different from hers. In Another Road Home's pivotal scene, filmed in medium long-shot, the oldest son speaks of his curiosity about the girl with whom his father spent more time than with his own children. He wondered what her experience, so patently different from his, was like. He asks her if she had similar queries about him. And with that simple question an abyss opens -- somehow her absence of interest in his life becomes symbolic of an inequality so profound it seems unbridgeable. At this point, Musa, hearing of Danae's visit, leaves the West Bank for America, causing anxious pacing moments for Danae and the Obeidallahs, who know the enormous risks he runs in crossing the border. As Musa tearfully embraces his long-lost "daughter," she wonders anew at his devotion. How, she asks him, could he iron her army uniform, symbol of his people's oppression? But for Musa there is no conflict between love of country and love for Danae. The Elons and the Obeidallahs meet and break bread in larger and smaller group configurations, but only Musa seems perfectly at ease with all camps. This state of grace signally escapes everyone else; though effort, respect and good will are palpable, so too is the tension. Danae insists on accompanying Musa on his trip back to the West Bank, her Israeli passport obviating some of the danger (though their traveling together creates vast incomprehension and suspicion among her countrymen). As in many recent films about the Jewish experience, an examination of the past reveals a hitherto unsuspected alternate point of view (e.g. "Hiding and Seeking" where children of Holocaust survivors visit the Polish family that hid their parents, only to discover they were never subsequently contacted or thanked for risking their lives). Though Danae has intellectually analyzed and made films about Jewish fanaticism (and her father has written books about the Palestinian situation), it is in dealing with her beloved alternate father that she recognizes the unconscious legacy of racism and oppression -- the subtle dehumanization implicit in the inability to spell a name or feel curiosity about a person. The fact that none of this is explicitly spelled out in the documentary, but rather overlays each social situation, brings home the complexity of Israeli-Palestinian relations and the uniqueness of Another Road Home's unflinching simplicity. Other Press"Another Road Home may be the best doc about Palestinian/Israeli relations that
I have seen. In great part, this is because it isn't
a film about Palestinian/Israeli relations. This
very personal film by Danae Elon is a search for a childhood caretaker.
As it turns out, she and her parents were living in Israel and her caretaker is a
Palestinian. She starts he journey by looking for his family members who ended
up in America and even at this very early stage of the documentary, there is
the tension of a woman with a camera wandering around an Arab-American
neighborhood in post 9/11 New Jersey. As we make each discovery, Elon never
overplays her hand or becomes dogmatic, even as her father describes the
elephant in the room that the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is. As a result, we
get to experience the real experiences of real people who are not raging and
anxious to annihilate their opposite numbers. There is politics and humanity.
There is real fear and real loss. And even good intentions weigh heavy on the
hearts of the people whose lives are so engaged with a conflict that is
thousands of miles away. A wonderful, wonderful little movie." "Ms. Elon, the daughter of Amos Elon, one of Israel's leading intellectuals,
whose parents now live in Italy, finds herself wondering about the family of
Musa Obeidallah, a Palestinian man who came to work for them as a housekeeper,
handyman and babysitter in Jerusalem after the 1967 war. Her search leads her to
Paterson, N.J., where several of his sons now live, and then to a reunion with
Mr. Obeidallah himself. Though it takes place in the bleak political context of
deteriorating Israeli-Palestinian relations, the film has an emotional
complexity that moves well beyond politics into the mysterious connections that
form, almost imperceptibly, within and between families." "Beginning with a quest by New York-based Israeli filmmaker Danae Elon (daughter of author Amos Elon) to
reconnect with her childhood caregiver (a Palestinian), this doc has all the
makings of diaristic drivel. But when Elon meets the man's sons in Paterson, New
Jersey, awkward exchanges reveal deep resentments: They recount the risks their
father took to work in Israel and the pain of his long absences. Elon's longing
for therapeutic catharsis is undercut by the realities of decorum, human
frailty, and the inseparability of personal and political."
"'Another Road Home' brilliantly explores relations
among and between the Elon and Obeidallah families, and through them takes on
the tangle of Palestinian-Israeli relations. Along the way it inevitably bangs
up against complex issues of power, politics, class and gender, while also
examining the nature and effects of subjugation, occupation, oppression and
resistance on members of both families. Against the backdrop of the seemingly
distant but all-too-present conflict, the film tells a brutally honest, often
painful, but always compelling love story." "The political is made personal in this powerful look at the unique
relationship between an Israeli family and a Palestinian one. In 1970s
Jerusalem, filmmaker Danae Elon’s parents employed a man named Musa to look
after her. Musa, a Palestinian, worked hard so that he could afford to send his
sons to the U.S. and spare them the increasingly intense and dangerous situation
at home. Ten years after last seeing her beloved Musa, Elon embarks on a journey
to find him and his sons that causes both families to face their feelings for
each other as Palestinians and Israelis, as well as people. A beautiful,
touching film that puts a human face on a conflict that most of us only know
through headlines."
From Another Road Home by Hartley Film Foundation: "Few films, if any, have ever approached the essence of the tortured,
contradictory relations between Israelis and Palestinians as powerfully as
Another Road Home. Danae Elon's film is a treasure, as bracingly honest as it is
deeply moving." "Another Road Home is a revelation. From beginning to end it
is crafted with such art that it unfolds both like real life
and perfect poetry. There are moments in this film to which
I could not believe I was a witness. Never again, will I think of the
relationship between Israelis and Palestinians without remembering this
film." |