Boston Premiere The Wanted 18 (cows!)
By Paul Cowan and Amer Shomali
2014 | Documentary | 75 min
Tuesday, July 21, 2015 ~ 7:30 pm
The Regent Theatre, Arlington MA
It’s 1987, and the first Intifada is rising. In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Palestinian residents want local alternatives to Israeli goods, including milk, which they have been buying from an Israeli company. Activists in filmmaker Amer Shomali’s village of Beit Sahour, a suburb of Bethlehem, decide to buy 18 cows and produce their own milk as a cooperative. They purchase 18 cows from an Israeli kibbutz and transport them to the West Bank.
Their venture is so successful that the collective farm becomes a landmark, and the cows, local celebrities. But this act of defiance does not go unnoticed. The Israeli Army raids the dairy, photographs the cows, and declares the farm a threat to Israel’s national security.
Employing an impressive mixture of media-claymation, comic strips, reenactment, archived video footage, sketches, photographs, interviews and voiceover narration, this ingenious documentary captures the spirit of the first Palestinian uprising through the personal experiences of those who lived it-and provides an enchanting, inspirational tribute to the ingenuity and power of grassroots activism.
Winner:
> Best Documentary from the Arab World, Abu Dhabi Film Festival, 2014
> Gold Tanit for Best Documentary Film, Carthage Film Festival, 2014
> Special Jury Prize, Human Rights Film Festival, Geneva, Switzerland 2015
Join us July 21 for the Boston Premiere! See who’s going on Facebook.
for the ‘mooooovie’
The Wanted 18: a tale of talking cows and Palestinian rebellion
The Guardian
Variety
An unexpectedly humorous account of one town’s experience of the first
Hollywood Reporter