It’s a peaceful afternoon in Jerusalem: A young boy is transfixed by caged pigeons; an accordion is being played somewhere; a figure walks through the crowd and is seated at a café.
Then: Boom.
It’s a discomfiting start to this unsettling film by Montreal director Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette. Produced by Luc Déry and Kim McCraw (Incendies, Monsieur Lazhar), it comes with the clout of a recent wave of globally-minded, internationally acclaimed Quebec cinema.
The next scene takes place in a nightclub, where protagonist Chloé (Evelyne Brochu) and her Israeli neighbour Ava (Sivan Levy) let loose. Chloé is a Québecoise obstetrician at a Palestinian refugee camp on the West Bank. Ava is in the military, and works days at a checkpoint on the border.
Each day, as Chloé crosses over to the Palestinian side, she is greeted by another world – a world of chaos, noise, poverty and brooding tension. Israeli soldiers stop into her clinic for random security checks; at night, they round up Palestinian men and grill them about terrorist plots.
Chloé becomes friends with one of her patients, Rand (Sabrina Ouazani), who spends days mining the dump along the dividing wall for salvageable items.
Travelling between these starkly different worlds every day starts to take its toll on Chloé’s conscience; consequently, her aura of impartiality becomes impossible to maintain. A series of tragic events pull her deeper into the thick of things, causing her to lose her bearings as she searches for meaning in what’s happening around her.
Shot with disorienting hand-held camera by the director’s father, Philippe Lavalette, Inch’Allah is an involving, occasionally flawed but ultimately challenging look at the collateral damage of a decades-old war that has no winner.
– T’Cha Dunlevy, The Montreal GazetteOfficial Trailer