a Tribute to Yulie Cohen
Screenings:
My Terrorist
Israel, 2002, 56 min
Director & Producer:
Yulie Cohen
Language & Subtitles:
English, Hebrew; subtitles in Hebrew
Festivals:
My Terrorist won a special jury award at the Jerusalem Film Festival in 2002, was nominated for the Silver Wolf Award at IDFA, and won the Ilaria Alpi Journalistic Television Award in 2004. It was broadcast in more than 20 countries, translated into 20 languages. The film was screened in more than 150 Film festival an d universities including Harvard, Yale, Rutgers, UC Davis, USC, Duke and many others.
In 1978, filmmaker Yulie Cohen was wounded in a terrorist attack by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. A stewardess for the Israeli airline El Al, she was attacked along with other crewmembers when getting off the bus to the hotel in London. In a remarkable twist of faith, twenty-three years later Cohen began questioning the causes of violence between Israelis and Palestinians and started to consider helping release the man who almost killed her, Fahad Mihyi. From the time she was a young girl, Cohen considered herself a staunch Israeli nationalist. Growing up in an upper-middle-class neighborhood in Israel (where her neighbors included future Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Arik Sharon, and military hero Moshe Dayan), she patriotically served in the military. After working as an Israel coordinator on a film shoot and visiting the occupied territories, Cohen came to realize that both Israelis and Palestinians played a role in perpetuating the cycle of hostility and bloodshed. It was her goal to stand up as a survivor and call for reconciliation on each side.
An inspiring story of forgiveness, Cohen's poignant documentary is a moving testimony of human compassion and a call for peace.
Screening and a Conversation with Yulie Cohen, Dr. Dan Geva and Prof. Nava Levit-Binnun
