In Hilla Medalia’s Children No More: Were and Are Gone, she looks at those who come to a public square in Tel Aviv to hold pictures of children killed in Gaza, silently remembering those who have been killed as others opt either to engage or not to engage with them, sometimes less than calmly.
Awards Buzz spoke with Medalia about how she’s worked on other projects including Censored Voices, H2: The Occupation Lab, and this year’s Oscar-shortlisted feature documentary Holding Liat, and the challenge of meeting people who might disagree on key terminology, like genocide and occupation:
“First of all, I personally always think of the words I use and how people perceive them, and I feel that sometimes I prefer not to use words that are too difficult, because I prefer that people will watch the film. I think that one of the strong things in Children No More is that it’s actually a silent video. They don’t say actually much. They stand with a picture of a child from Gaza who was killed in the war by Israel, and I think that a lot of people can look at the face of a child and can agree that no child should die in a war, and they could identify. So I feel one of the strong thing to me is that, they, the activists, they don’t use these words. They stand quietly. This really silent video is so strong. You mentioned Holding Liat, the same thing also goes for Liat Atzili. She is very smart and also brings something very complex. On one hand, she suffered so much personally. She was a hostage herself. She lost her husband. Her community is completely broken. But on the other hand, she is able to look at the other side of the fence. She’s able to look at the pain and suffering of the Palestinians.”
Children No More: Were and Are Gone is on the Oscar shortlist for Best Documentary Short.
