The Sea: deserving award-winning film or one-sided disgrace?

The Israeli film, The Sea, directed by Shai Carmeli-Pollak, swept up five trophies, including top prize for Best Picture, at The Ophirs, Israel’s national film awards. Minimalistic and almost lyrical, it can be viewed as an apolitical touching story about a boy from a nondescript village near Ramallah in the West Bank who runs away to Tel Aviv because he wants to see the Mediterranean Sea.  

Alternatively, The Sea, which also won the best screenplay, best actor, and best supporting actor, among other awards, and will represent Israel at the Oscars in the US, can be viewed as a political rant, deliberately intended to defame Israeli soldiers and Israel. 

The plot is simple. Khaled, a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, is on his way to visit the sea in Tel Aviv for the first time in his life as part of a class trip that had been okayed by the Israeli authorities. At an IDF checkpoint, the soldiers deny him entry because his papers are not in order. Khaled is returned home, but later sneaks into Israel and embarks on a journey to the sea in Tel Aviv. 

When Khaled’s grandmother calls his father, Ribhi, to tell him that Khaled has disappeared, Ribhi leaves his work in to find him.  But Ribhi is an unskilled construction worker who is working in Israel without a permit, and knows that, if caught, he will not only lose his work, but will likely face time in an Israeli prison. 

There is very little dialogue, and most of it is in Arabic (with Hebrew and English subtitles). Revealing the director’s background as a documentary filmmaker, the filming of both Tel Aviv and the unnamed Palestinian village is distant, almost uninvolved, with little visual commentary.