6/7/10

Blood Relation

This documentary is sorta sad. A young adult daughter in a successful Israeli family finds some old letters from an aunt. It seems that years ago she either eloped or was kidnapped by a Palestinian Muslim when she was 14. Despite letters to her family pleading for them to bring her home, her family left her there where she married the fellow and bore him eight children.

Now over thirty years have passed and the woman is dead, but the young Israeli woman wants to reconnect with any family members who may be living in Palestine. She convinces her father to make a phone call and arrange a family get-together.

Because the visitors are half Jewish, the daughter doesn't anticipate any problems but her father has to pull some strings to make it happen. When a middle-aged cousin arrives, she is deeply grateful for the chance to meet the other half of her family. She is interviewed, along with her mother's former neighbors, some cousins and other family members. She needs some money to fix a temporary problem and the Israeli businessman loans it to her, despite his brother warning him that it will only cause trouble. Sure enough, that one loan isn't enough...

The woman says, in one of the later clips, "I'm grateful for the help he has given me, but he has so much..."

The daughter finally expresses her regret at the conclusion of the documentary, saying she "made a mistake."