Courtesy of Just Vision
Filmmaker Julia Bacha’s award-winning 2009 documentary Budrus tells the story of a small Palestinian village situated near Israel’s border on the West Bank. In 2004, Israeli Defense Forces began constructing a security barrier along that border, much of which would be built on Palestinian territory. Under the Israeli plan, Budrus and five other towns would be choked off from the rest of the West Bank, as well as 300 acres of Palestinian land and 3,000 of its generations-old olive trees—the lifeblood of the small agricultural community.
The Brazilian filmmaker enters the fray, introducing us to community organizer Ayed Morrar as he compels town elders that nonviolent resistance is the only instrument that can save Budrus. “We must empty our minds of traditional thinking,” Morrar says at an initial town hall meeting, and his statement proves to be a prescient one. What begins as a small community demonstration quickly escalates into a 10-month battle of attrition, as Morrar unites the most unlikely of allies under one pacifist flag: the rival—and frequently aggressive—Fatah and Hamas parties, left-wing Israeli and international activists, and perhaps most importantly, the women of Budrus.
In fact, the film’s most harrowing display of courage comes from Morrar’s 15-year-old daughter, Iltezam. When the initially all-male protests are beaten back, Iltezam rallies the women of Budrus and rushes past Israeli forces into the path of a moving bulldozer, unyielding even as they are clubbed with batons. “I was completely terrified,” she recalls. “I really wanted to cry, but it wasn’t a suitable time for crying.”
Their progress stalled, Israeli soldiers were ordered to begin using “traditional crowd dispersal methods.” It’s to her credit that Bacha seems uninterested in demonizing Israelis without cause, and she invites several members of the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) for interviews. Israeli Army Captain and spokesperson Doron Spielman justifies the encroachment by pointing out that between 2000 and 2002, hundreds of Israeli civilians were killed in suicide bombing attacks, many originating in the West Bank.
Even so, it’s difficult to reconcile watching heavily armed soldiers firing tear gas, rubber bullets and stun grenades into defenseless crowds while they demonstrate peacefully on land that is legally theirs. Bacha employs film and video footage from 12 different cameras to document the fighting from as many perspectives as possible—even in the film’s most dispiriting moments. When IDF troops move into Budrus proper, frustrated Palestinian youths begin throwing stones at the soldiers, a signature of Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation. Morrar tries to intervene, but before he can, the soldiers return fire with live ammunition.
Ultimately, after 55 demonstrations, the path of the security barrier was largely moved behind the Israeli border due to political pressure created by the demonstrations in Budrus. At a time when Israeli and Palestinian peace talks are stalled on the issue of West Bank settlements, could there be a timelier entrant into the St. Louis International Film Festival? Even for those unfamiliar with the complex sociopolitical morass that is the West Bank, Budrus is a moving and educational tribute to the notion of international cooperation and nonviolent resistance as a means of achieving political change.
