Holy Land: A Year in the West Bank (2014)

• 65%
• 2014
• Documentary
• Peter Cohn

On a desolate West Bank hilltop, 50 Israeli families live in house trailers, yards littered with rusting tricycles and old furniture. This is Migron, the largest illegal settlement outpost, built in defiance of international law and the Israeli courts. From 2011 through 2012, a battle about the fate of Migron rages through Israel's politics and Supreme Court. Israeli anti-settlement activist Hagit Ofran leads the struggle against Migron. She is an underdog -- her group, Peace Now, is a shadow of what it once was. Powerful forces are arrayed against her. Thus unfolds the story of "Holy Land," an unprecedented, multi-character documentary about a tumultuous year in the West Bank. Director/producer Peter Cohn comes to the story with an outsider's unaffiliated perspective, gaining intimate access to the lives of key players on both sides. They include an Orthodox Israeli settler, a young Palestinian journalist, the progressive mayor of a Palestinian town and the Rabbi Menachem Froman, settler rabbi and peace advocate. It's a cross section of the West Bank never seen in one film: right and left, secular and religious, from Hasidim to Hamas.