Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize several times. As a Palestinian gynaecologist practising in an Israeli hospital he was able to pass the strictly guarded checkpoints to Gaza without a hitch. His humanist perspective is expressed in words like these: “Do we need to be sick in order to understand that we are equal?” When the Israeli army attacked Abuelaish’s home in Gaza in January 2009 and three of his daughters died, he picked up the phone. On the other end of the line was Shlomi Eldar, a Channel 10 reporter who decided to broadcast his friend’s despair live to the Israeli audience. A historic television moment; the shelling of Gaza was terminated soon afterwards.
Director Tal Barda has given her portrait the same title as Izzeldin Abuelaish’s book, which was published in 2011. More than ten years after the publication of this memoir, the doctor as well as his now grown-up children speak out in her film, talk about traumas, their new beginning in Toronto and the struggle to obtain an official apology from Israel. “I Shall Not Hate” addresses the complicated ties between the fates of Palestine and Israel. Izzeldin Abuelaish’s conviction that peaceful coexistence is the only chance of survival remains unbroken.

There is a house hanging from heavy ropes, firmly anchored to the rocks. Up there in the cliffs, far above the town below, a father lives with his son in the cold. In his 2D frame-by-frame animation, director João Gonzalez uses few colours, which makes the harsh shadows and extreme camera angles of his drawings all the more atmospheric. He has realised a metaphorical tale that can do without dialogue, relying on sound and images alone.

A piece of land awaits Déni Oumar Pitsaev in the Pankisi Gorge, a Chechen enclave in the Georgian part of the Caucasus. His mother bought it for him, hoping to bring her son, who was socialised in Western Europe, back to his Chechen roots. When he arrives, he realises that the gift comes with strings attached: Relatives and friends from the neighbourhood constantly ask when the 40-year-old Déni with his receding hair intends to start a family. When he counters with his own vision – building a treehouse for adults ten metres from the ground, a childhood dream – he triggers complex debates about the relationship between the individual and society and what historical conditions it is subject to: The region is deeply scarred by the effects of the Chechen War, the wounds extending even to his estranged relationship with his father. In all this, Pitsaev’s manner of confrontation is always extremely delicate, never turning into an attack. With expert curiosity, he approaches a world that is both completely alien and home to him.