There Is A Field

In October 2000, a police officer shot and killed unarmed 17-year old Asel Asleh. His story is tragically familiar for Americans, but Asel was not killed in Ferguson, New York City, Atlanta, or Minneapolis. Asel was a Palestinian teenager who was murdered by Israeli police as he participated in a demonstration, calling for an end to the Israeli occupation and settler-colonization.

There Is A Field began as a play about Asel’s life and his death, told from the perspective of his older sister, Nardin. Through Nardin’s struggle to cope with the murder of her brother, the play offers a uniquely personal lens for learning about intersecting systems of oppression, including Zionism, Jewish supremacy and white supremacy—root causes of state-sanctioned violence and structural racism.

Donkeysaddle Projects (DSP) filmed a performance-reading of There Is A Field at the Peñasco Theatre Collective in 2018, performed by activists, artists and organizers from the Movement for Black Lives. There Is A Field film weaves together their performance with archival footage of Asel, and the activists’ own realizations of the parallels they see between Asel’s story and the experiences of Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) communities in the United States. The film, set in Palestine and performed by BIPOC artists and activists in the US, builds solidarity across intersectional struggles for liberation and decolonization, and is sure to spark conversation and connection.

Copresented by Roxbury International Film Festival.