5 MINUTES from HOME
documentary by Nahed Awwad, 52 min. Palestine
The Jerusalem Airport lies along the road that links Jerusalem to Ramallah. At a 5 kilometer distance from Ramallah and 10 kilometer distance from Jerusalem, the airport has been occupied by the Israeli army since 1967. Nahed Awwad has witnessed the expansion of this east side of the dusty runway, to become a large checkpoint for access into the West Bank.
Notwithstanding, she discovers that it has not always been as such, and that what is a sad spot today used to be a place where international aircrafts landed in the 1950s and 1960s, and where travel was much less constricted. The happy images and testimonies of the past contrast bitterly with those of the present where access is denied to the aviation zone that is now being besieged behind barbed wire and will soon be trapped behind the Israeli Separation Wall.
Nahed goes to meet this place, evoking the past in order to have a better apprehension of the present: today’s Palestinian reality that is marked by forgetfulness.
