Ave Maria

uscpublicdiplomacy.org

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Jan 21, 2016

The Palestinian short film Ave Maria, a 2016 Academy Award nominee, offers a comedic look at a chance encounter between a group of Palestinian nuns and a Jewish settler family in the middle of the West Bank. The family’s car has broken down outside the covenant, but because both groups are religiously observant—the nuns have taken a vow of silence and the family cannot use a telephone during Shabbat—they must work together, with serious limitations, to help the family return home. The film explores the religious and cultural differences between the two groups, demonstrating not only the public diplomacy possibilities of film, but also the importance of multi-cultural communication, cooperation and understanding, both on and off the silver screen.