Doraid Liddawi
A complicated and nonliteral Jewish film about feelings the name for which has not yet been invented. A friend of the family in which the wife died in labour loved her more than life itself, although he will never say it out loud. He gladly agrees to babysit the child for a day and brings her home, where he is suddenly faced with resentment from his relatives. This multifigured film with beautiful unspoken truths talks about widowhood of other people and oneself, about others’ children who can be dearer than the yet unborn children of one’s own, and about love that does not follow the loved one into the grave.
In Nazareth, an old couple lives wearily to the rhythm of the daily routine. On the other side of the border, in Ramallah, their son Tarek wishes to remain an eternal bachelor, their daughter is about to give birth while her husband lands a movie role and the grandmother loses her head... Between check-points and dreams, frivolity and politics, some want to leave, others want to stay but all have personal affairs to resolve.
LEMON TREE meets JOHN LE CARRÉ in a subtle thriller set in Germany involving Mona, a Lebanese woman (Golshifteh Farahani), and Naomi, an Israeli Mossad agent (Neta Riskin) sent to protect their informant while recovering from plastic surgery for her new identity. Mona and Naomi - together for two weeks in a quiet apartment in Hamburg. A safe house. A shelter. No one saw what was coming, no one knew that this supposedly quiet fortnight would turn into an abyss and that shelter would need to be found elsewhere. The intimacy of the relationship that develops between the two women is exposed to the threat of terror that is engulfing the world today. In this game of deception, beliefs are questioned and choices are made that are not their own. And yet their fate takes a surprising turn in this suspense-laden, elegant neo-noir.
An examination of the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 through to the present day. A semi-biographic film, in four chapters, about a family spanning from 1948 until recent times. Combined with intimate memories of each member, the film attempts to portray the daily life of those Palestinians who remained in their land and were labelled "Israeli-Arabs," living as a minority in their own homeland.
