Much has been written and filmed about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict: dense, intellectual writing seeking to resolve history into policy. Set in the eponymous Garden, a red-light district in the filmmakers’ hometown of Tel Aviv, wife and husband directing team Ruthie Shatz and Adi Barash’s GARDEN chronicles the days and nights of two Palestinian male sex workers, Nino and Dudu. Misplaced, used, disused and discarded, GARDEN’s subjects are those who often have little say in the policy shaping their lives. Here, in Shatz and Barash’s empathic hands, aesthetic rigor is fused with true feeling to empower a society’s forgotten citizens in an uncommonly expressive film that provides a startlingly clear window into the lives of men often hidden from view.
- Barry Jenkins
"A poignant verite life-slice" "Well-made docu provides non-exploitative insight" VARIETY
"Heartbreaking, passionate and articulate." "Their vivid personalities and troubled friendship tells a larger-than-life story, presented with compassion and urgency." THE INDEPENDENT WEEKLY
To find out more about the film, click the link here.
