Very powerfull. This documentary re-affirms my believe that the Palestinian/Israel dispute is over land pure and simple....another ugly face of Colonialism perpetred by the very people who know what oppression is.....sad.

This program has given me a new perspective as I look through the lens of my camera. For that I thank you.

I agree: "Everybody has a soul; everybody has a god; everybody has a dream; everybody has a hope..." etc. Larry Towell truly is a poet with his cameras. Magnificent! Unfortunately he and other talented photographers can only capture images of the physical externals, and that only for a split second.

Towell's rambling philosophizing is also fascinating. Even poetic. Sadly, it is too expressive of the fashionable secular humanism that functionally dismisses human souls and their eternal significance. Yes, he recognizes human joy, pathos, aspiration, wickedness and contradiction. Typically, he offers no help for the tragic dimensions of the human condition. It's another demonstration that secular humanism has no solutions for our fatal fallenness.

Sadly, this is what our public education systems teach our citizenry. In part this is because it is fashionable to dispise the only Saviour our Creator has sent us.

a beautiful film, thank you for the gentle and so human approach to your subjects. Yes, Mr. Towell helps us see souls, not conflict, and to understand dignity. Your quiet reflections on the architecture of palestinian life are not controversial -- they are insight, and prophetically sad.

Powerful, sad and compelling.

Larry Towell is the classic brave artist. He is not afraid to poke his nose and lens where many do not want them.
The truth is out there and it can be beautiful or ugly, but those of us who can't just pick up and go to some places need to see them anyway.

His family diary was touching, but his documentation of the US/Mexico and especially Israel/Gaza walls was excellent. And shocking. Real humans caught in the middle of decades of politics, and as Larry says, a land grab, only through the misfortune of their birth.

With no personal ax to grind, his stance is honest and spin-free: just the black and white facts that so many are afraid to show or cowed into not showing.

He will surely be pilloried here as a propagandist that doesn't 'get it', but mostly by people on one side or the other, or those who have never seen it personally. Open your eyes and see the truth.

Kudos to the CBC too, for showing it. Please do so again.

I thoroughly enjoyed "Everybody Has A Soul"
Larry Towell has captured photos that I wish I had the ability to create. One of my favourites was the Title photo of the small child. It was seeing that that made we start to watch the program. Going from that photo of innocense to the tension in the faces of the people going through the checkpoint said it all. If only we could all maintain that innocent countenance throughout life.

The film was well done and I liked the comments by Larry.

I could not agree more with Larry when he spoke about War Photographers. I have said it time and time again when I look at World Press Photo Awards and all you see is War Torn Areas. If you go there and don't come back with an award shot then you better look for a new job.

What Larry said is so true. Making something out of nothing. In watching him walk and shoot a door way and move on is making something out of nothing. You are looking and looking and see nothing and then there it is when you open your eye after a step goes by. The shot.

Larry photos of the family on the farm are outstanding.

Seeing the film it inspired me and made me realize that when I work on projects that the first day you shoot and go home after three hours that it is only the beginning.

Larry being so Calm speaks volumes of his thinking process. I like the style I noticed of heads being at the bottom of many photos.

For me personally this was a FRESH look at images I have not seen before and am proud of a Canadian success story. Magnum is not the success. The success are the historic images that will be FRESH each and every time they are seen.

Thank you CBC for showing this important collection of images.

Dave Roels

soulful way to cover the human condition I am so sick of the news/politics sensational journalism I and felt watching this documentary gave me a chance to feel intimately connected to humanity

nice film. I wonder what the name of the somber jazz tune was at the beginning and at the end of the film.

What a wonderful documentary! I really enjoyed discovering Larry through his past works and accompanying him on present trips. Seeing how he goes about framing the world, snatching beauty and humanity with a gentle determination was inspiring.
Great subject, great doc.

I generally agree with most of the observations put forward above. However, as I watched the film I couldn't help but feel there was a real disconnect between Larry Towell's talk and his walk. While preaching sensitivity and empathy for our fellow human beings, our brothers and sisters everywhere, he himself on a number of occasions in the film exhibited what I thought to be quite insensitive, even rude, behavior in his dealings with people. Just to cite one example that I recall at the moment: At one point in the film Towell is walking in the rain with umbrella in hand; a stranger starts walking alongside Towell, seeking cover from the rain under Towell's umbrella. Towell's response: 'What are you doing? Get away from me,' or something along those lines. This may seem like a small, insignificant thing, but it is often the smallest things that say the most.

It seems that Larry Towell believes that “everybody has a soul” - except for the Israelis. His photographs and his comments are completely biased in favour of the Palestinians. It’s one thing to support an underdog, it’s quite another to totally ignore or distort the facts.

The film simplistically presents the Palestinians as entirely innocent in the making of their circumstances while identifying the Israelis as the oppressors. No mention is ever made of corruption and terrorism of the past or present Palestinian leadership. The only Israelis shown are soldiers, contrasted with Palestinian rock-throwing children. Could Trowell not find any adult Palestinians with guns or firing rockets into Israeli schools? Could he go not into a school to take photos of Palestinian children being taught to hate Jews?

Just to provide a small amount of balance, could he not spend some time in Israel to photograph restaurants and buses blown up by suicide bombers, or talk to children who must cope with the rockets fired daily by his innocent Gaza Palestinians? Or would all this not fit into his preconceived thesis that it’s the Israelis who are to blame?

Are any of the Palestinians terrorists? Apparently not – a man on the street says so in the film – and of course Trowell does not question this. He also does not question why there are still Palestinian refugees 60 years after the creation of Israel, while we don’t hear about the hundreds of thousands Jews forced to flee from Arab countries?

Trowell may be a recognized photographer, but he and the filmmaker fail miserably as objective documentarians.