By Aurora Tellenbach

You would easily think that only young men would be capable or daring enough to climb Israel’s concrete Separation Wall but as Infiltrators shows, there are all sorts of people making the attempt. Prevented from walking across the border into Israel at the checkpoints, people are finding various ways around the restrictions and controls over their movements. Having a permit does not necessarily mean that they can pass the checkpoint, the humiliation continues even with the right papers.

Although the film is mainly focusing on the attempts of young men to climb the Wall, girls and women also try their luck. Their reasons vary: it’s not just the need for work as there are also those seeking medical treatment, visiting sick relatives or to pray at the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Few are fit for climing the high wall, some don’t even have the appropriate footwear for such a feat.

Climbing the Wall carries great risk for all who attempt it. On the Israeli side there are the regular police patrols who catch Palestinians before they have even made a break for it. Palestinians face the dangers of being shot by the Israeli police, hit by cars or being conned out of their money by smugglers. The need to cross the wall has inadvertently created an industry for smugglers; few dare to show their faces on film. Some smugglers claim to help out their fellow Palestinian brethren for a ’symbolic reward’ which has been contradicted by those who do not deliver on their promise..

Documenting the people that are trying to cross the Wall, the camera is shaky and often out of focus. This is because Khaled Jarrar’s film is more than a fly on the wall documentary; he hides with the young men who wait in the woods for the van to arrive and burrows through the makeshift tunnel. He follows a young woman and her journey across the wall and around a construction site after which she disappears from the film, hopefully making it to her destination.

As so often with documentaries focusing on one theme, the examples make the film: a young woman is afraid of being caught but still makes an attempt; a group of middle aged men are dumped after paying a small fortune to a smuggler; an older woman given a key to a door in the Wall that once enabled her to visit her daughter.

Infiltrators shows how Israel’s Separation Wall divides families and prevents people from accessing basic human needs as well as highlighting the courage of the Palestinians in overcoming their fear in order to reach their destination.

Infiltrators will be screening as part of the 2013 London Palestine Film Festival at the Barbican Centre on Thursday 9 May 2013 at 8.15pm. Click here for more information.

Aurora Tellenbach is an arts project manager mainly working on stage productions with cross-cultural themes. Formerly a broadcast journalist, Aurora is now in the process of completing a PhD on Mapping Migration in Contemporary Arab Cinema (2000-2010). She has lectured on the same subject to postgraduate Film Studies students and has conducted extensive fieldwork in North Africa and the Levant.