Encounter Point
3 1/2 stars
Directed by Ronit Avni & Julia Bacha
Not rated
Opens Friday
As films about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict go, Encounter Point begins with astonishing optimism. We see hundreds of Jews andArabs, each having lost loved ones to violence from the other side, meet each other at a Bereaved Families Forum. They trade stories of their pain and lend sympathy to one another without the slightest hint of animosity. With this level of understanding and civil dialogue, the violence should be over in no time, right?
Wrong, of course. Outside the forum, it’s a different world. Primarily, we follow Ronit Avni, who lost her son to a Palestinian sniper, and Ali Abu Awwad, who has suffered bloodshed and imprisonment along with his entire family. The two advocate tolerance and nonviolence to their respective sides. The resistance they encounter is depressing. In a television interview, Avni is asked if she desires vengeance against the sniper, who escaped and has become a folk hero in the Palestinian territories. As she insists violence is not the solution, it’s chillingly clear that that’s not the answer the interviewer is looking for. Awwad has just as little luck swaying his own side. We see the funeral of an Arab girl no more than 10 years old who succumbed to Israeli gunfire. Her father proudly declares at the ceremony that she should be considered a martyr and honored as though she had been a suicide bomber.
Avni and Awwad explain that their preachings are only tolerated at all because their suffering has earned them some credibility. They are commonly dismissed as “normalists”—a word used derisively to describe those who believe a solution can be found without eradicating the other side.
The film’s most fascinating twist comes at the end, when Avni is informed that the sniper who shot her son has been captured. She debates whether or not to see him and put her beliefs to the test. What would she say? What would he say? Could such a civil dialogue actually be achieved? For a documentary filmmaker, this type of an event would be a dream come true, but alas, it never quite unfolds as we hope. Instead we get a lesser scene that hints at the vague possibility of a resolution but remains disappointingly anticlimactic. Sort of like the whole conflict.