Re-edited especially for Channel 4, the critically acclaimed and award-winning documentary, Promises provides a unique perspective on the Israeli – Palestinian conflict.

Featuring Palestinian and Israeli children living in and around Jerusalem, the film offers an intimate, refreshing, and sometimes hilarious, insight into issues at the heart of the crisis in the Middle East.

Living no more than 20 minutes apart, but locked in separate worlds, Promises explores the boundaries that lie between these children and tells the story of a few who dared to cross the lines to meet their neighbours.

Shot between 1997 and the summer of 2000 Promises takes place during the first Israeli Palestinian Peace Process: a time of relative calm between the Palestinians and Israelis.

Aged between 9 and12, the children in the film are from a generation that rarely speaks for itself. Neither as self-conscious as teenagers nor as polite as adults, they speak directly, without self-censorship.

With an acute awareness of the political reality that surrounds them, the children are mirrors of their cultures and spokespeople for future generations of Israelis and Palestinians.

From the twins Yarko and Daniel, who live in an Israeli neighbourhood in West Jerusalem, to Mahmoud, a Jerusalem Arab whose father owns a coffee shop in a Palestinian area, one to one interviews and snapshots of footage from the children’s live combine to create a colourful mosaic of childhood in the Middle East.

Other children featured in the film include Sanabel and Faraj who both live in the Deheishe Refugee Camp, home to more than eleven thousand Palestinians, and Moishe, from the Jewish Settlement, Beit-El.

Each child has their own unique story to tell: Both Faraj and Moishe have watched their best friends die, while Sanabel’s father, a journalist and local leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine has been held in an Israeli jail for the past two years: no formal charges have ever been brought against him and he has never stood trial.

Many of the children hold passionate beliefs about the land rights of the opposing factions and harbour fervent feelings of hatred towards their neighbours.

Yet within this atmosphere of loss, sadness and conflict, childhood innocence offers touching moments of relief and hope for the future. As Daniel and Yarko cross the checkpoint for the first time to meet up with Faraj in the Deheishe camp, the children discover a new sense of understanding and realise they have more to talk about than just politics.

But in the current climate sustaining such friendships is difficult and two years on the boys are no longer in touch.

This film has been shortened and re-edited for Channel 4 by Diverse North.

Further information about Promises film project can be found at www.promisesproject.org

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