Sarah Masters reviews

My So Called Enemy*

Emmy Award-winning film director Lisa Gossels is in the final stages of production on a riveting documentary entitled My So Called Enemy. For two weeks in 2002, Lisa filmed twenty-two Israeli and Palestinian teenage girls who came together in New Jersey for the intense and challenging Building Bridges for Peace program.

After the program ended, Gossels traveled to the Middle East to follow the lives of six of these teenagers. She filmed them as they reflected on their Building Bridges experience in New Jersey, on what united them as human beings. She caught on camera in Israel and the Palestinian territories these girls’ families and friends, and captured their daily fears and frustrations there.

The young women are all insightful and smart, blunt and articulate. Gal and Rezan become best friends, though Gal is Israeli and Rezan is Palestinian. Towards the end of My So Called Enemy, the viewer sees Rezan take Gal to the wall near Rezan’s village that now divides Rezan from Israel. The director also follows Hanin and Rawan, a traditional and a feminist Muslim, and Inas, a Palestinian, and Adi, an Israeli, who do not get along.

My So Called Enemy is, as the director puts it, “a timeless and timely film about the human consequences of all conflicts.” Lisa Gossels also shines a light on the role of women in building peaceful and tolerant communities.

*Working title was Imagining Peace

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Completed: 2010
Running Time: TBD
Producer/Director: Lisa Gossels

If you are interested in this film, My So Called Enemy is in post-production and is scheduled for release this year. You can contact the director for more information at Good Egg Productions, by e-mailing LGossels@gmail.com.

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