Read an interview with Tom's sister, Sophie Hurndall.
Did you and your family have any misgivings about becoming involved in a film in the first place?
Yes we did. But for a large part we've been supported by the media and we've been very lucky in that – it has made a massive difference in terms of the campaign. It does depend on which broadcaster you work with, and obviously Channel 4 has got a good reputation. My parents were convinced that the scriptwriters wanted to make a difference with this film and that they understood the issues. I think that's led to greater trust with them.
What do you think of the end result?
It's an incredibly emotional and powerful film. It's hard to separate yourself from it as someone who's emotionally involved, but it captures the essence of what we went through – in relation to the Israeli army and in relation to what happened to Tom. And as well as the trauma surrounding all of that, the shock of realising that the Israeli government and army were going to be proactively covering-up for the soldier who shot Tom.
How has your family changed since Tom's shooting?
We've changed massively. Before, my mum was working with special needs children and she was very committed to that; my dad's always been quite interested in politics and worked as a lawyer; I was looking to become a psychotherapist and Tom was trying to get in to photojournalism – I think all of us individually had been committed to making a difference, but this altered the direction that we were all moving in. My mum's now working for a Palestinian charity, I'm working for a humanitarian aid agency working in Palestinian Refugee Camps (www.map-uk.org) – we're all working in a much more passionate, vocal way on this specific issue. In a way, it's brought us all together, but it's also been a very rocky ride. Having to deal with all of these things so close to home, and having to work in an area that you're so closely connected to is hard. It means every single discussion is so emotionally laden it that all becomes incredibly fraught.
Is there a sense that five years on the dust has now settled?
There are two sides to it. Once something like this has happened, that hole is always going to be there – the loss of Tom. But I think we are, as a family, coming back together a lot more. It's taken just over five years but we're beginning to re-forge relatively normal family relationships outside of all of this again. We're definitely moving back to a normal way of being with one another. But it's been hard for a long time to look at each other – you always feel like there's someone missing.
The film focuses on your father's fight for justice. What was your role in the campaign?
The way that the foundation (The Tom Hurndall Foundation) was set up originally, it was very much my mother, my father and I at the heart of it. I would say that no one of us was more involved than the other; in the strategy of the campaign, in doing the media coverage, and being involved in the meetings – we all had different strengths and we all brought something different. For the sake of making a one-and-a half-hour drama about the issue, the film shows one man against the Israeli army. That's one of the areas that is not 100% true to life, but they've captured the essence of what the family was doing. In reality there were three of us – more than three of us, actually – all involved and working together very closely. Anyone who was involved at the time would have had the same view- that my mother and myself were every bit as involved as my father in driving the campaign forward.
The story in this film begins with Tom's death. Would you have preferred there to be more remembering his life?
There are two stories to be told. One is about the Tom we loved and who was my brother – who I grew up with, used to throw apples at and chase around the garden. There's a huge part of me that wants him to be remembered. Like in the Auden poem, when someone dies you feel that everything should just stop – everything's changed and you want the world to realise it's a different place. Yes, there's a part of me that would love a film to be made about who Tom was and why he did what he did, but that's very different from the film that's been made. I think it's more important in a way that Tom's life comes to mean something. The reason he went out to Gaza, to see for himself what was going on. I think it's really important that this film reflects that truth.
