5 Minutes from Home (2008)

The Jerusalem Airport lies along the road that links Jerusalem to Ramallah. It has been occupied by Israeli army since 1967, at a 5 kilometer distance from Ramallah and 10 kilometer distance from Jerusalem. Today, to the east of the runway, a huge military checkpoint blocks the Jerusalem-Ramallah road, a dead end street. Nahed Awwad discovers that life has not always been like this, and that this sad spot used to be a place where international aircrafts landed in the 1950s and 1960s, when Palestinians traveled freely. The happy images and testimonies of the past contrast bitterly with those of the present where access is denied to the aviation zone that is now being besieged behind barbed wire and soon will be trapped behind the Israeli Separation Wall. Nahed Awwad goes to meet this place, evoking the past in order to have a better apprehension of the present: today’s Palestinian reality that is marked by forgetfulness.