Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
Stephen Dorff | ... | Yoni | |
Abdallah El Akal | ... | Fahed (Ziko) | |
Alice Taglioni | ... | Leclair | |
Loai Nofi | ... | Aboudi (as Loai Noufi) | |
Tarik Kopty | ... | Seedo (as Tarik Copti) | |
Johnny Arbid | ... | Abu Fahed (as Joni Arbid) | |
Mira Awad | ... | Im Ahmed | |
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Eitan Londner | ... | Ilan |
Morad Hassan | ... | Rami (as Morad Hasan) | |
Ashraf Farah | ... | Khalid | |
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Nidal Badarneh | ... | Mustafa (as Nidal Badarni) |
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Adham Abu Aqel | ... | Ahmed |
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Osamah Khoury | ... | Hassan |
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Michel Khoury | ... | Ali (as Michil Khoury) |
Ali Suliman | ... | Syrian Officer |
Beirut, 1982: a young Palestinian refugee helps an Israeli fighter pilot escape from PLO captivity because he wants to visit his ancestral family home. En route through war-torn Lebanon their relationship develops into a close bond.
Eran Riklis likes stories in which a long, picturesque trip is paralleled by an inner journey of discovering the past, or the self. In Zeytoun, the trip is from Beirut across the border into Israel, and although I'm an Israeli who's never been to Lebanon, an aerial stock shot or two of Beirut was enough to sell me on the Lebaneseness of the locations seen in the first part of the movie, which were actually well-chosen sites in Israel. Unlike another viewer here on IMDb, I had little trouble accepting Stephen Dorff as an Israeli. Israelis come in all colors and sizes. Granted, his English was too good, but so was the Arab kid's. A brief sequence showing kids learning English verbs at school didn't really solve the problem. One makes allowances, though, when the visuals look realistic and the situation depicted is compelling, as here. My problem, and perhaps the problem of the Israeli public (which did not flock to see this movie), was that the audience is invited, a bit heavy-handedly, to sympathize with the Arab family's desire for repatriation to Israel without any balanced mention of the context in which such families found themselves outside Israel in the first place.