A Bottle in the Gaza Sea

A Bottle in the Gaza Sea offers the viewer a small snippet of hope for the mess that makes up the Middle East. It's not much hope, and the premise is too far fetched to think such an event could trigger much change. But then, the story is fun to consider, and we know that there are those there who work tirelessly daily to bring about small improvements at much risk to there own well-being. This film is an ode to all those caught in the millennia of tangled hate and distrust who continue to hope for a better tomorrow.

Couched in an unlikely love story, the film asks a very simple question. Why is it that Palestinians and Israelis can not get along at some very basic human level?

For an American audience used to the Hollywood pacing, this lovely film will seem a bit slow. It's conceived more in the European style of film making, taking a little more time to tell the story with more attention to character development. Still, by the end of the film, while empathetic with them, one still does not feel one knows the lovers very well. But we have been apprised of their own chagrin at the political morass foisted on them, the difficulty of having dreams let alone acting on them, and the pressures to just fit in with the depressed and the dispossessed. Yet, somehow, these two young people - a Jewish teenage girl and a Palestinian boy - find a connection through a note left in a bottle what washes up in the Gaza beach.

I loved it. 4½ of 5!