Don't Cry - Review
By Paris Film Awards
Don’t Cry is a 9-minute computer-animated short film by Palestinian director and animator Hisham Zreiq. The film is about a Palestinian man, a Palestinian girl, and an Israeli Woman, all meeting in a beautiful and peaceful place by a pond, the water filled with wild plants and birds.
The little girl is sitting on the dock waiting as the man arrives by boat, confused to see the girl. Later, a second boat arrives with the Israeli woman on it. The woman seems to be deeply disturbed to see the man. The man doesn’t want to speak to the woman, the woman refuses to speak to the man, and the little girl, in the middle, tries to reconcile the two.
The film speaks loudly about the ongoing Palestinian/Israeli conflict. A plot twist towards the end of the film shows how the three characters were in fact directly involved in two attacks: an Israeli attack on a Palestinian school, and one Palestinian attack on an Israeli bus.
The 9-minute short is of course a simplification of the dynamics of the conflict, which works thanks to the presence of the child. The conflict is almost filtered through the eyes of the little girl. As a matter of fact, for the victims implicated in the bloody conflict, it doesn’t matter who started what and who did what to whom. All that matters is that, if anger and vengeance don’t serve any purpose once we are all dead, why should they have a place while we’re still alive?
The film perfectly encapsulates the concept of an eye for an eye, and how the conflict as we see it today — especially in the wake of one of Hamas attacks on Isreal — is really a snowball effect, a desire for a never-ending retaliation. People and countries can keep reacting to violence with more violence, and peace will be achieved only once everyone is dead. “Don’t cry. Now, we’re all dead” says the little girl, almost as if finding solace in the eternal state where nothing can harm her anymore.
The animation is cold and mechanic, but the poignant plot and the intense voice-over work make up for it. The story is simple, yet extremely effective. The characters all have a fundamental role in this parallel world made of sadness and grief.
A film like this is now as important as ever, as it highlights how, in the conflict, the most vulnerable groups of people are the ones who suffer the most.
A moving short that definitely leaves you with a ton of questions and doubts about how much we really know about each country, after all.
