Through the life and personal archives of Chaim Peri, a founding member of Kibbutz Nir Oz and peace activist who died in captivity after being abducted in the attacks of October 7, 2023, this documentary, as illuminating as it is moving, traces the tragic failure of a collective utopia and the painful fate of a disputed land.
On October 7, 2023, nearly a quarter of Nir Oz’s residents were killed or abducted by Hamas fighters. Among the hostages was Chaim Peri, one of the founders of this kibbutz on the edge of Gaza, who died in captivity a few months later. For more than four decades, the filmmaker and artist documented, camera in hand, the daily life of his comrades, from the original dream to the social and economic erosion of the collectivist model, once the emblem of a triumphant socialist Zionism. In an Israeli society growing ever more radicalized and militarized over the years, this unshakable idealist, who took part in every war out of loyalty to his homeland, campaigned to the very end against the occupation of the Palestinian territories and the expansion of settlements. “I am afraid of people who have now decided that we can solve our problems by force,” he confided in an interview recorded in 2019.
On the Border
Chaim Peri’s films, found in an underground shelter after the attack on the kibbutz, form the heart of this poignant documentary account. Combined with historical archives and testimonies from researchers and from Nir Oz residents, now rehoused in a neighboring town, these intimate images, with their nostalgic grain, sketch the portrait of a generation of pioneers deeply attached to the Zionist ideal, yet convinced that security could never last without peace. Through these lives on the border, Yaël Vidan and Olga Kravets retrace, from the creation of the State of Israel to today, the upheavals of a conflict that continues to shape the fate of two peoples, between periods of coexistence and outbursts of violence. Also giving a voice to Palestinian geographer Salman Abu Sittah, whose family was driven from the region during the Nakba, their film tells, in all its ambiguities, the story of a lost utopia that nonetheless survives in part among the descendants of the kibbutzniks. As the situation in Gaza and the West Bank continues to deteriorate, Chaim’s grandson, Mai Peri, has in turn become one of the voices of the peace camp. A glimmer of hope amid chaos.