They Were Nomads
25 minutes
Carlo Concina and Cristina Maurelli
Short Documentary
2020 - Italy
Canadian Premiere
Arabic with English Subtitles
Every morning, on a highway in the middle of the desert, Jamel waits for a ride to go to work. Ghadeer gets up before dawn to make bread and prepare breakfast for her five children. They live in a shack rather than the tent their ancestors used to live in. They are a part of the Bedouin minority that lives between Jerusalem and Jericho in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
They are a proud people who try to remain solid and united despite the radical change of their life imposed by Israeli occupation. Palestinian Bedouin communities suffer particularly from the loss of their identity and traditions, forced to remain locked down in a small territory and become sedentary - born from these oppressive conditions are poverty, degradation and domestic violence.
The film is a unique and rarely heard testimony from a community treated as the lowest class people on their own land.
Boston Palestine Film Festival 2020 - Winner Audience Award
