DIAMETER OF THE BOMB

In June 2002 a suicide bomber destroyed a rush hour bus in a Jerusalem suburb. Filmed 16 months later, 29 people who are connected by the attack trace the memories and the outcomes of the catastrophe to give an alarming snapshot of our times.

Victims and their families, friends of the bomber, paramedics, forensics and fire fighters are among those who give testimony and in doing so, bring home the tragedy more powerfully than any amount of political rhetoric.

Guardian review by Ian Brooks

Steven Silver and Andrew Quigley's harrowing documentary takes its title from Yehuda Amichai's poem about the ripple effects of violence in the world at large.

The starting point is a 2002 suicide bombing aboard a Jerusalem bus.

From here we are led out, past jittery drivers, anguished surgeons and the bearded Zaka volunteers, who bike between the bombsites in order to sponge every last drop of blood from the roadside.

We wash across a gallery of bereaved relations, from the bomber's defiant Palestinian parents to the Israeli mother who recalls her last words to her daughter ("I said shalom, not goodbye. I never took my leave of her").

That this makes for such a peculiarly frustrating experience is surely intentional. Instead of hope or resolution, Diameter of the Bomb spotlights an endless flow of despair, waste and bewilderment.

It suggests that the 2002 ripple is still in motion and that there are plenty of others close behind.

DOWN TO EARTH

Leaving behind their cosmopolitan life, a couple and their three young children travel the world searching for a new perspective on life. During their five-year journey they live with some of the oldest indigenous communities on the planet. They record their encounters with the elders tribal sages never filmed or interviewed before. Without a crew or schedule, just one backpack and one camera each. And the curiosity to listen. 

BACK TO BERLIN

Back to Berlin follows eleven modern day motor bikers on a mission to carry the Maccabiah torch, and fly the Israeli flag from Tel Aviv to Berlin.

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This is the first biker flick-meets-holocaust feature documentary. Eleven motor bikers’ mission is to take the Maccabiah torch from Israel to the site of Hitler’s 1936 Berlin Olympics. Our riders, like the Nazis’ torch relay for the 1936 Olympics, carry their torch from Athens to Berlin but this time take a detour via Auschwitz.

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As resurgent populism and anti-Semitism once again rear their ugly heads, this film brings an important message through the voices of those who have been personally affected by one of the darkest pages in human history. This isn’t simply a “Jewish” story. It is the story of people overcoming the worst from fellow man to restate our common humanity.