ALL that Google could tell me about Noam Fitoussi was that he created the idea for this remarkable filmic paradigm.

Never mind. Canvassing a broad spectrum of the issues confronting the dispute between Jews and Palestinians, director and co-writer Lorraine Levy has crafted something for all folk of goodwill and open mind to embrace and enjoy.

Two families deal with the revelation that 18 years earlier, two boys born at the same time ended up with each other’s parents, Josef Silberg with ambitions to become a musician in the home of an Israeli Air Force colonel, Sa?d Al-Bezaaz, home from Paris with a baccalaureate and plans to study medicine, in the family of a Palestinian engineer unable to find better work than repairing cars.

The film deftly weaves its narrative through the slow process of families of conflicting faiths coming to terms with the reality that a young man with Muslim blood has undergone Jewish ceremonies and vice versa, in a gentle polemic inviting those opposing creeds to get real and find equal values to stop the aggression.

All three book-based religious faiths put men above women in their decision-making processes. So Fitoussi’s reversing of that hierarchy is important. Two fathers and one Muslim older brother baulk at the possibility of conciliation to which the mothers and sisters quite quickly move.

The film’s visual contrast between Jewish and Palestinian lifestyles is a significant element. And there’s no doubt which faith would need to make equitable economic adjustments to achieve enduring harmony. But we can hope, can’t we?

At Palace Electric