“An agricultural engineer, a blacksmith, doctor, a spaceman.” These are the answers children give to the question “What would you like to be when you grow up?” These children, who have lived through war, onslaughts and trauma, who have more relatives dead than alive, still have the same hopes and dreams. That is the essence of Children of Shatila.
Mai Masri has managed to capture the complex yet essential role children play in a society ravaged by death and destruction. A line from the documentary that strikes a chord is, “Promise me that Palestine will never be forgotten.” Our homes and identities are essential parts of all our lives. Many of these children have never seen the place they come from.
It is only through the stories they are told by their parents or grandparents that their identity is kept alive. Perhaps many people who were displaced from their homeland will never see their homes again. When they say they would one day want to go back to their lands, many of them would only be able to do so through their grandchildren. It's not just the wishes and aspirations of the children for their lives but the wishes and aspirations the older generations have for the young ones.
“You need to look and listen and talk to people. That's how you understand the reality”, Masri says this in the context of understanding why she chose to film the people she did. In a lot of sense, the film is about the people who suffer the consequences of these wars.
Objectivity is another theme she discusses. It's easy for us to say and think that we are objective but there is always a point of view in every story that is told and these children should be viewed as a reliable and faithful lens into society. These questions often get lost in the larger conversations that are happening about the war and the bigger parties involved. At the end of the day, these are people bearing the brunt of the situation and they need to make their mark in history.
lovely work, sneha !