The film-makers of Israel and Palestine have been exceptionally productive over the past decade, creating work that acknowledges the intractable difficulty of reconciling enemies in such entrenched positions.
Waltz With Bashir, The Lemon Tree, The Band's Visit, Lebanon, Defamation and more recently, The Policeman, have taken a satisfyingly complex view of a conflict so often drawn in black and white. Meanwhile, substantial and powerful documentaries have cogently pleaded the Palestinian cause.
This technically assured but hopelessly underwritten French-Canadian drama cannot be considered in their company, not least because it is disturbingly easy to read as an endorsement (the title is Arabic for "God willing", after all) of terrorism by suicide bombing.
Such a bombing occurs, heard but unseen, in the opening scene and the film shows what led up to that moment. Quebecois doctor Chloe (Brochu), who works in a clinic in Ramallah hard up against the wall that protects a new settler village, befriends one of her pregnant patients, Rand (Ouazani) and her politicised brother Faysal (Sweid).
In one of the film's many contrivances, this aid-funded volunteer lives on the other side of that wall: the contrast between Israeli and Palestinian life can be repeatedly underlined and Chloe can have scenes with her friend Ava (Levy), an Israeli soldier who hates her work.
