ARNA'S CHILDREN
Sunday May 16, 2004 at 10pm ET/PT
repeating Friday May 21, 2004 at 10pm ET

"Yussef committed a suicide attack in 2001. Ashraf was killed in the battle of Jenin. Alla leads a resistance group. I have known them since they were small children in a theatre group I directed.  I returned to the ruins of Jenin with my camera, to see what happened to the children I knew and loved…my film tries to tell their stories and to understand their choices."
- Director, Juliano Mer Khamis

Winner of Best First Documentary at the 2004 Hot Docs Film Festival

Juliano Mer Khamis's mother was Arna, the Jewish daughter of a Zionist family. His father was a Palestinian Arab. They lived in the West Bank, where Arna opened a theatre group for Palestinian children from Jenin, to help them express their everyday frustrations, anger, bitterness and fear. When the Israeli armies occupied the city, the theatre workshops came to an end. Seven years later, immediately after the battle of Jenin, Mer Khamis returned to find out what happened to the children he had known in the theatre group. Shifting back and forth in time, Arna's Children reveals life on the battlefield for these Palestinians trapped by circumstance in the deadly Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: ARNA'S CHILDREN ACTIVE MEMORIAL SITE


For six years, beginning in 1989, Mer Khamis filmed his mother and the children in the theatre. After Arna's death (1929-1995), the theatre closed. Seven years later, the Israeli army moved in on the Jenin refugee camp. Only days after the curfew was lifted, Mer Khamis returned to the camp with co-director Danniel Danniel to discover what had happened to the young people he had grown so fond of during the years at his mother's theatre school. During his stay, Mer Khamis discovered the destiny of Arna's Children.

Many took up the Palestinian cause, and subsequently died for it. In a particularly poignant moment in the film, a mother discusses the death of all her sons save one, and she even admits that she'd rather see him killed than captured. Arna's Children is full of emotional revelations, as Mer Khamis delves into the personal stories and relationships behind the statistics reported on the news.

Arna's Children is written and directed by Juliano Mer Khamis and Danniel Danniel; produced by Osnat Trabelsi and Pieter van Huystee in association with IKON.