Arquivo

May, 1948. Some days before the British leave, and the State of Israel comes into being, an old cargo ship, the Kedma is transporting scores of survivors from the Holocaust, originally from the four corners of Europe. While Jewish and Arab forces come face to face with cannon shot, the refugees are deposited on the nearest beach. Now they are trapped, between crossfire from the British army that intends to send them back and the Jewish secret police who has come to welcome them to the Holy Land and send them to a kibbutz, as a start to occupation of the new state. This film is the story of the first hours the men and women spend in the country newly established, the mark of a conflict the solution to which seems ever more distant. The main issue in Kedma is the same as the world today, over 50 years later, in the film by Amos Gitai: can Arabs and Israelis co-exist on the same territory?