Dir. Paul Cowan, Amer Shomali, 2014, 75 mins, Canada/Palestine/France
This winning mix of documentary and clay-animation offers an unexpectedly humorous account of a West Bank town’s experience of the first Intifada, a subject that doesn’t usually generate a lot of laughs in cinema. It recounts the true story of how the Palestinian neighborhood of Beit Sahour near Bethlehem acquired a herd of 18 dairy cows and then had to hide them from the Israeli security forces when their existence was absurdly deemed a threat to national security. Screened in collaboration with Leeds International Film Festival.
