The Sons of Eilaboun (2007)

Directed by

Hisham Zreiq

Genre

documentary film

Country

Germany

Runtime

24 min

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A Palestinian filmmaker documents his father's childhood memory of a village massacre carried out by the Israeli army in 1948. The film recounts how fourteen villagers were killed and the rest were briefly expelled to Lebanon. It is a personal account of loss and displacement told through the filmmaker's own family story.

solemnpersonalgrief-strickenreflectivetestimonialintimatedevastating

What happens

The Sons of Eilaboun (Arabic: أبناء عيلبون) is a 2007 documentary film by Palestinian artist and film maker Hisham Zreiq (Zrake), that tells the story of the Eilabun massacre, which was committed by the Israeli army during Operation Hiram in October 1948. Eilaboun is a village in the Northern Galilee between Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee. In the incident, fourteen men were killed and twelve of them were executed. The villagers were expelled to Lebanon and became refugees for few months, before being allowed to return in 1949. The film is the story of the film maker's family, and specially his father's story. Hisham Zreiq explained why he made the film when he said "He choked and his eyes were full of tears, and with a trembling voice he said 'I remember it as if it has just happened' -- this is the way he ended the story, the story of a nine-year-old boy from a small village called Eilaboun, in Palestine 1948, the story of my father, when he was a refugee". Ramiz Jaraisy, the mayor of Nazareth and Hana Sweid, an Israeli Arab politician and member of the Knesset from Eilaboun thanked Zreiq. Gilad Atzmon, an Israeli political activist, wrote that Zreiq delivers a deep and authentic reading of Palestinian history and portrays the intense emotional impact of the Nakba on those who survived. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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