Iddo Soskolne

The Voice of Ahmad

Doron Djerassi, David Ofek

The first ever Israeli documentary film to feature an Arab protagonist is revisited 50 years later by top graduates of the Sam Spiegel Film School.

Tuolla puolen

Janne Reinikainen, Iddo Soskolne

Anja has been waiting for thirty years for this day to arrive – for the day when her brother will die. She herself is already dead. She was twelve at the time. She and her brother were playing a game that went too far and then it happened. Anja has lived in limbo ever since; her job is to help the people of her small town who have just lost their lives to find their way to the other side. She shows them they are not alone. Sometimes the right music can help. Or a little dance – which cannot be seen by the living – where the accident happened. Today, at home on the couch in front of the television, fate takes its course for her brother. He struggles to drag himself upstairs to Anja's old room where he dies. That is where Anja died too. She is happy to see him again; he can hardly bear it. But she has something to say to him. And a song for him. A song about a country where there is no such thing as fear.

Kolo Shel Ahmad

Ram Loevy, Doron Djerassi

Ahmad Masrawa, Ram Loevy

I Am Ahmad, a 1966 13 min. revelatory short, was originally censored before its stormy release. Fifty years later, top Arab and Jewish alumni of the Jerusalem Sam Spiegel Film School conduct a poignant dialogue about “today’s Ahmad”, contending with questions of the impossible coexistence between Palestinian citizens of Israel and Jews that is rapidly deteriorating. Comprised of six chapters, the feature film is political, activist and fistful, mirroring a torn Israel. Yet, Voice of Ahmad is at times also funny, poetic and sarcastically utopian.