Together with my husband, Ron, I went to see On Thin Ice at the premiere screening at the Jerusalem Film Festival. This review is by both of us.
If you have seen Syrian Bride, by Eran Riklis, then you know that the Druze on the Golan Heights are living between a rock and a hard place. The scene where the bride sits at the border fence, unable to leave Israel and unable to enter Syria, is a perfect metaphor for the contemporary situation of this community.
On
Thin Ice, directed
by Udi Kalinsky and Irit Hod, is a documentary film about the Druze living on
the Golan Heights which was occupied by Israel after the Six Day War in
1967. The area has been annexed to
Israel since 1981 and the Druze who live there are encouraged to accept Israeli
citizenship.
There are
many issues that the Druze community of the Golan Heights faces. One of them, not mentioned in the film, is
taking place right now – the dangers that their Druze brethren are facing in
Syria at this very moment. At the
premiere screening at the Jerusalem Film Festival this week, filmmaker Udi
Kalinsky stated, “We pray with the community for the well-being of their
brethren in Syria.”
Members of the
Druze community who live in the northern Golan Heights have a complicated
identity. The older generation feels that they are still “Syrians” since they
were born in Syria and have many family members who still live on the other
side of the border. On the other hand, the younger generation seeks to become
integrated within Israeli society, and even to accept Israeli citizenship, for
practical reasons, like passports for traveling, not for love of the Zionist
state. This complicated identity crisis
is at the heart of this excellent film, which explores this issue carefully and
sensitively through very well-done character portrayals.
The film was
made over a three-year period. In 2022,
Aya is a 19-year-old Druze woman, playing ice hockey with a women’s team in
Metullah. She eventually progresses to
the national team and is chosen to be a part of the group that will represent
Israel at the upcoming international championships in Serbia. The only complication is that Aya does not
have Israeli citizenship and is not permitted to represent Israel unless she
obtains Israeli citizenship and an Israeli passport. Her father, Akram, is against her accepting
Israeli citizenship but he puts the decision in her hands.
Her uncle, Ayoub, is clinging to his Syrian history, culture, and identity while intermingling with Jews all over the Galilee. He takes the filmmaker to meet many people in Majdal Shams to ask them about their identity. Ayoub is very concerned about the future of his town and about their identity crisis. In one very moving scene, he is holding his young granddaughter while watching the news and he wishes a better future for her than the bitter reality of the present.
Then the Israel-Hamas
and Israel-Hezbollah wars break out in October 2023 and rockets from Lebanon are
falling very close to Majdal Shams. In 2024 a Hezbollah rocket landed on a
playground and killed 12 children in the middle of Majdal Shams, which was one
of the greatest tragedies in this war, and which paradoxically connected this
Druze community with the fate of the citizens of Israel, much more than they
would have expected. One of them was Ayoub’s
12-year-old grand-daughter.
In his
speech at the Jerusalem Festival premiere screening, Ayoub –- who was very
impressive both in the film and on the stage as a serious community leader -- pleaded
for an end to the violence, an end to the ongoing war, and an end to the
bloodshed. His speech was inspirational
as was this film, which portrayed a very complex issue in a sensitive and
substantive way.
On
Thin Ice
(documentary, 92 minutes) is available from Hadar Porubanova at Ruth
Films, hadar@ruthfilms.com
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