Paradise Lost

Video essay from a Palestinian fishing village, with a repressed past. Kicking against its blanket of silence and the conformity pressed upon its women, the director, a native of the village Fureidis (or 'Paradise'), tracks down a rebellious predecessor, Suaad, who once received an exemplary prison sentence for her non-violent PLO activities, a warning to her fellow villagers, and is now a lawyer married to an Englishman and living in exile in Britain. Her record is personal and heartfelt, but not without its longueurs. (Awarded best debut documentary at the DocAviv festival, Tel Aviv, in 2003.