Film Screening

Professor Caroline Kahlenberg of the Jewish Studies Program hosted a film screening of Neighbors on Wednesday, November 9.

Film Description

In a Syrian border village in the early 1980s, little Sero attends school for the first time. A new teacher has arrived with the goal of making strapping Panarabic comrades out of the Kurdish children. To enable paradise to come to earth, he uses the rod to forbid the Kurdish language, orders the veneration of Assad and preaches hate of the Zionist enemy- the Jews. The lessons upset and confuse Sero because his long-time neighbors are a lovable Jewish family. With a fine sense of humor and satire, the film depicts a childhood which manages to find light moments between dictatorship and dark drama.

Neighbors was written and directed by Mano Khalil. See the trailer here.