After a February benefit preview of "Promises" at a screening room in New York's Tribeca neighborhood, the filmmakers talked about their ongoing relationship with the kids and described what each is doing now. Sanabel continues to dance, Shlomo is focused on his religious studies, while the twins are still glued to their volleyballs. Mahmoud is more interested in girls than revolution, and Moishe has more fun translating Harry Potter books into Hebrew than hatching plots to banish the Arabs. Interestingly, Goldberg notes that Mahmoud and Moishe enjoy the same music: Britney Spears and 'N Sync. (Apparently, bad taste knows no boundaries.) Faraj is still despondent and dreams of emigrating to America.

A couple of days later, I sat down with B.Z. Goldberg and Justine Shapiro to discuss the kids in "Promises," the future of the Middle East and the sometimes agonizing, shoestring-budget production process through which they made this extraordinary film.

Where did you find these wonderful kids?

Goldberg: We were looking for children who represented the major forces in the conflict, children who were articulate, who liked us and who were interested in the process of filmmaking. And whose mothers cooked good. It's true, some of their mothers were incredible cooks, and as a starved, broke film crew, we found ourselves gravitating back to those houses.

Were any of the parents hesitant to get involved?

Goldberg: Once they saw that we were not in for a cheap, quick news interview, that we actually were having a relationship with their kids, and their kids trusted us, then the parents, by and large, were very open. Also, cameras are so prevalent in the Middle East, with film and video and news teams, they're just part of daily life. So it was less strange to have a camera around than it would be to make a film about a family here.

Were you really surprised that Faraj, a Palestinian boy living in a refugee camp, wanted to meet Daniel and Yarko, the Israeli twins?

Goldberg: Oh my God, we were not ready for that at all. I mean, literally in the middle of an interview, he said, "I want to call them." And that telephone conversation was edited down to a few minutes in the film, but it was close to an hour and a half long.

When Faraj started crying, and then the camera cuts to you in tears, how did you feel about that choice?

Goldberg: Carlos Bolado, our cinematographer, insisted in putting that in. I fought him because I thought it was too self-indulgent. But he convinced me that it showed something of our relationship. So it's hard to watch, it's something that in this culture is not particularly appreciated. A Russian guy walked up to me at the film festival in Berlin, and he looked me in the eyes and said [puts on accent], "I see your film in Rotterdam. This is best film I seen in years. I cry in your film." I explained to him that in America, men are macho, and no American man would tell me, "I cried in your film." That's just not something you would show off. And he said, "Russian men very macho too. But, you cry in film, so I can tell you I cry." So, that was a moment where I started to feel OK with it.

Why did you choose that particular age group?

Shapiro: It was really what kind of motivated us to make the film. For some reason we ended up meeting amazing kids at the beginning of our research in 1995. Moishe was the first one we met. He was 8 and a half years old and he was like this 50-year-old man, with his body language. I don't speak Hebrew, but I was just mesmerized by this character. What was amazing about the age group is they were so candid, so uncensored. When they parroted their elders, they would say things that I don't think their elders would have said so readily on camera. Also they weren't teenagers yet, they weren't cool, so they weren't so self-conscious. And they were still at that age where, like Faraj, he changes his mind, and you just don't see adults do that very often.

I also think it really humanized the issues, because even though you can't believe some of the outrageous things that Moishe or Mahmoud say about the other group, at the same time you're responding to this person who's just a child.

Shapiro: It's disarming to hear this stuff from kids, and the feedback we've gotten reflects that. People come to this issue with very strong opinions, and I think this film really opens hearts. Despite themselves, people end up reengaging with the conflict. A lot of Jews respond to the Palestinians very interestingly, like, I didn't know Palestinians could feel. Most Israelis don't know a Palestinian.

Goldberg: They definitely don't know them intimately.

Visually, the film is so striking. Justine, I suppose your "Lonely Planet" experience made you focus on geography and landscape?

Shapiro: One of the most exciting discoveries I made in the process of making the film was understanding the geography and what the landscape feels like. Jerusalem is the holy city, but it's also congested and poorly planned. So, you know, as long as we're humanizing these characters, let's take the veil off the city. It's not just the Al-Aqsa mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the quaint cobbled roads of the Old City. It's also this urban nightmare.

It's amazing to see the geography, with everyone 10 minutes away from each other.

Goldberg: And they don't know each other.

Shapiro: Yeah, when the film played at the Jerusalem Film Festival, Sanabel and Faraj were a 15-minute drive away and they couldn't come to see it.

Goldberg: Maybe what's even more ludicrous is that few of the people at that screening had ever been to that area [the Palestinian refugee camps], even though it's so close. And now it's become even more difficult, in fact impossible, to go there.

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