Omar Amiralay's film about the dictatorship in Syria highlights the devastating effects of 35 years of autocratic Baath party rule on society. Thirty-four years ago, Amiralay was an admirer of the modernisation of his country and even made his first short essay-like documentary in praise of the Baath party's new-built Euphrates River Dam. Today however, Amiralay regrets the naivety of his youth.

He returns to the scene of his first documentary and stops for a few days at the village el-Machi near the lake Assad, which was named after the late Syrian leader Hafez al-Assad who ruled Syria with an iron-fist for 30 years until his death in 2000. The people he encounters there show the shocking effects of party propaganda. From school children to teachers and government officials, everyone recites the same praise for the president and the same slogans glorifying the Baath party.

In Amiralay's highly controversial film which was applauded on its first showing in Lebanon but attacked elsewhere in the Arab world as part of a Zionist plot and withdrawn from the Carthage Film Festival, the dangerous cracks in the ageing dam become a metaphor for what is happening to Syria and its people.

Award: Grand Prix at the Biennale of Cinémas Arabes, Paris 2004

A deadly choice: killing or dying. This is the dreadful personal experience that film director Nir Keinan revisits in his film. It starts on the Lebanon-Israel border at dawn on June 4^th 1989. An Israeli patrol is ambushed by a Palestinian squad trying to infiltrate the Israeli side. The clash lasts for 12 minutes in which all three Palestinians are shot dead. Lieutenant Nir Keinan, commander of the Israeli patrol, suffers no more than a hand injury.

Nir Keinan takes us on a personal journey to reconstruct the events that led him to this tragic turning point in his life when he had to decide between killing and being killed. As a settler in the Golan Heights, he refused to serve in the occupied territory. Later as an officer, he was kicked out of the Israeli Army. In his personal commentary, he begins a dialogue with Nur, the Palestinian commander he killed sixteen years ago. Through this very intimate story, the bloody Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the horrors of war become stunningly vivid. The bodies of those killed will never stop talking.