Sumud - Ten Years After

In 1987, when she was studying at the Beit Zvi School of Stage and Cinematic Arts in Tel Aviv, Ayelet Dekel filmed a group of Palestinian children from the refugee camp Deheisha, located on the West Bank. The ‘Intifada’ was about to erupt and in SUMUD she examined the backgrounds of this uprising. Her conversations with pre-school and school children demonstrated how deeply rooted the feelings of hatred were in the Palestinian community. ‘Sumud’ means ‘preserve the land’ and may well be one of the most frequently used words in the Arab language. The concept also refers to a folk song that all the children in the kindergartens of Deheisha can sing. To the question, ten years ago, what they wanted to be in the future, the children generally said things like freedom fighter, gangster or hangman. In order to see how their opinions have developed, filmmaker Dekel returned to Deheisha, which had meanwhile become Palestinian territory. The children who had been taught to fight for peace with bricks, are now approaching adulthood. Do these teenagers still have the same dreams and nightmares?