Naram & Yael

What starts as a food and culture documentary made by a Palestinian and Israeli woman evolves into a decade-long political and personal struggle as the Palestinian desperately fights for her liberation and the Israeli's Zionist beliefs are dismantled.

Spanning twelve years and over 200 hours of footage, we have filmed a raw and intimate story of a friendship in all its beauty and pain. We are ready to start post production and we need your help to bring it to the world.

Naram, a Palestinian citizen of Israel becomes best friends with Israeli chef, Yael, while working as a waitress at her Auckland restaurant. In 2014, they haphazardly planned a trip to Israel/Palestine to film a food and culture documentary. Enlisting a former dishwasher, Callum Thomas (Co-Director and Cinematographer), to come along with his camera. This plan immediately unravels as it becomes clear that Yael has ignorant views towards Palestinians and wants to “normalise” Israel as sophisticated and benevolent. She only wants to show-off delicious food and the glitz and glam of Tel Aviv. To challenge Yael’s views, Naram convinces her to visit the Occupied West Bank for the first time. Naram is shocked at her friend's visible fear and anxiety toward its residents. In a return trip in 2016 the women commit to filming a more honest depiction of the political reality. They speak to more residents of the West Bank and hear firsthand a fraction of the innumerable plights of the Palestinian people, such as the cruel treatment of Palestinian farmers by the Israeli military. At the steps of a Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, Naram describes how Jewish history has been purposefully manipulated to present an unchanging notion of existential fear and helplessness that blinds Yael, and the Israeli people, to the Palestinian struggle. Yael accepts and acknowledges this to Naram’s relief.

In more recent years we see that the women’s lives have profoundly changed. Naram relocated to Finland, then Berlin in a bid for European citizenship and her freedom. Yael unlearned her Zionist upbringing and joined the Palestinian solidarity movement in Auckland. However, the devastating events of October 7th 2023 and Israel’s continued genocide in Gaza upends the women’s lives. The renewed violence causes the women to lose many important family and friend connections as well as the ability to speak critically of Israel without reprisal. 

They reunite for a summer road trip in New Zealand in late 2024 to comfort and support each other. But a tense car-ride conversation through the volcanic fields reveals Naram’s desire for acknowledgment of her family story, as well as new details of Yael’s father’s activities while serving in the IDF. These new feelings of grief and guilt are devastating to the women and they must face themselves again with radical honesty. They must decide if their journey, their change and all the love they have for each other is still enough to survive this new reality together. 

Together they seek a final journey of closure and self-reflection a few months later upon the hidden ruins of a Palestinian village, a place that was once Naram's home.