5 Broken Cameras (2012)

Nominated for:  Best Documentary    I try not to get political on this blog.  I am not interested to hear every armchair politician (or even real ones, for that matter) discuss everything they think is wrong with society.  I don't care what motivations they have, whether they are earnestly expressing a belief or just trolling.  I don't want to hear it.

So I'm going to talk about this movie and I'm going to avoid any and all mention of the politics in the area.  Mmmkay?

Emad Burnat, his wife, and their four sons live in a village named Bil'in on the West Bank.  Emad and the other villagers are farmers, having tended olive trees on that land for as long as anyone can remember.  However, the Israeli government has recently erected a barrier illegally infringing on the village's land in order to build settlements.  Emad had initially gotten a camcorder to document the early days of his youngest son's life, but decides to also use it to film the villagers' non-violent protests against the barrier.  Over the next five years, through five different cameras, Emad watches friends and relatives get arrested, beaten, and shot and witnesses his village become the epicenter of worldwide protests against incursions into the West Bank.

You will note that I said the Israeli barrier is an illegal one.  The villagers, which comprise Jews and Palestinians, sought legal justice and received an injunction against the settlement from an Israeli court.  So I'm going to pull an A Time to Kill moment and ask you to pretend they are a town in the Midwest fighting encroachment from a corrupt development group.  Because it's the Middle East, it's a huge issue.  But what if they were white?  Would anybody give a shit?  Would it be nominated for an Oscar?

I have sympathy for them, the same as I would if they were from Nebraska.  It sucks to see a group of people ground beneath the wheels of a huge corporation, despite being legally in the right, simply because they are too small to fight back.  It is a shame that their homes and livelihoods are being destroyed in the name of progress.  I have no answers. 

I wish I could say this was a gripping, tear-jerking call to action, but it's not.  Hell, it took me two days to watch it because I fell asleep halfway through.