FRANCE PALESTINE / Documentary looking for crowd-funding

Abdelhatif Belhaj and Lolita Bourdet are appealing for crowd-funding to finance the post-production of their documentary “La pêche et l’olive”, filmed in Seine-Saint-Denis and Palestine.

The film follows nine teenagers living in a district of Montreuil (a “difficult” suburb of Paris), who go to the village of Beit Sira, near Ramallah in Palestine as part of a cultural exchange. They discover a country which until then they had only the vaguest idea about and spend time with young Palestinians who will later visit them in France.

“La pêche et l’olive” is a film about these young people’s journey of initiation as they learn what identity, cultural heritage and a relationship to the world mean.

Having completed the filming, the two directors launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise the necessary funding, primarily for post-production but also to make a DVD version and a book about the young people’s experiences.

The Kickstarter campaign ends on May 31st. The film is due for release in June. You can view 15 minutes of extracts on the Kickstarter page.