Garden

‘The Garden’, as a neighbourhood in Tel Aviv is known, is the last place that looks like the Garden of Eden. Boys live in the street, making a living as prostitutes or by selling drugs. This candid film focuses on the engaging 17-year-old Nino, an illegal Palestinian, and his 18-year-old friend and protector Dudo, an Arab Israeli. Both have had troubled childhoods and live from day to day in the street. They balance on the thin line between a stable life and drug addiction or crime, dreaming of a life outside the Garden. Adi Barash and Ruthie Shatz followed the two boys for a year, literally everywhere, even using microphones that are taken into customers’ cars. The unpolished and poignant portrait of the two mutually dependent friends is presented against the background of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the taboo on homosexuality and the tense relations between the streetwalkers and the authorities. Although the progress of their lives is no source for optimism, the boys’ resilience and friendship leave light at the end of the tunnel.