Open Bethlehem review – heartfelt plea against incarceration of a city
Open
Bethlehem review – heartfelt plea against incarceration of a city
/5stars
Leila
Sansour’s documentary about her campaign to open up Jesus’s birthplace once
again is admirable – even if you don’t rate its chances too highly
Palestinian
director Leila Sansour has made a fierce, poignant film about her family and
her hometown of Bethlehem, now in Palestinian territory but progressively
stifled by the Israeli government’s anti-terrorist barrier; that huge, ugly wall
with which President Benjamin Netanyahu apparently wishes to be remembered as
the Erich Honecker of the Middle East. At the moment, tourists can only visit
Bethlehem for brief periods by means of an intensely policed system of
state-approved minibuses. This film shows how Sansour comes to Bethlehem with
her husband, novelist Nicholas Blincoe, with a bold, imaginative plan in mind:
her Open Bethlehem campaign. It’s an attempt to marshal a rainbow coalition of
prominent international Christians, Muslims and Jews to persuade Israel’s
government to open up Jesus’s birthplace in the simple interests of commerce
and ecumenical tourism, and let people visit the city freely and for as long as
they wish. Now, Open Bethehem is hardly apolitical, but it has the support and
good wishes of many, including the Archbishop of Canterbury and Jimmy Carter.
But the grim reality is … are those giant concrete blocks going to be removed?
The answer appears to be no. Yet Sansour soldiers on. Her Open
Bethlehem project is
the kind of first step on which peace processes are built. It deserves to
succeed.
/
0:00
تعليقات