Saïd (Nashef) and Khaled (Suliman) seem like ordinary Palestinian guys: they work in a garage, they smoke hookahs... and they’re so committed to their country, they’re prepared to die for it.
This absorbing drama follows them in the hours leading up to a planned suicide bombing in Tel Aviv, making their everyday actions strangely poignant. There are effective moments of dark humour — during the filming of their martyr videos, their recruiter happily munches on a sandwich as they passionately declare their wish to die for freedom.
These are accompanied by less successful attempts at romance — Saïd’s love interest feels like a self-conscious spokesperson for less extreme methods of protest — but the drama is handled with sparse, soundtrack-free sensitivity, and there’s much to provoke thought about the motivations of these self-destructive terrorists.
