Zaytoun (Eran Riklis, 2012)

Beirut, 1982 and an Israeli fighter pilot is shot down and taken prisoner by the PLO. He escapes with the aid of one of his captors, an adolescent refugee to whom he promises passage to his dead father's house in Israel. They start the trek towards the border and go through the seven stages of enemies becoming friends on the way as if they were mere formalities and they had no reason for antipathy beyond force of habit. The film is nicely shot and feelgood, and it really shouldn't be. Digging a little into its making reveals what you would probably suspect anyway from the liberties it takes with logic, let alone its caricatures of comic and shifty Syrians and woman-murdering Arab militias, i.e. that the script was systematically purged of any meaningful attribution of guilt upon Israel by the country's censors. Any enjoyment had from the light interplay between the two protagonists is therefore hopelessly tainted.

4/10