For Life

Palestinians are fighting annihilation in maternity clinics, too. Like many wives of prisoners held in Israeli jails, Hind is trying to smuggle her husband's sperm in order to conceive a son and cling to hope for the future. But the operation is risky, the sperm has a short shelf life, and she has to race against time, checkpoints and traffic in the West Bank, while bombs fall on Gaza. Not only does the film tell a compelling human story that, unusually for a current affairs documentary, takes on the tension of a chase movie, it also offers a glimpse into the value system of the Palestinian community, with its heroes and martyrs, as well as an insight into Israel’s repressive and carceral system and how thousands of inmates and their families organise to resist it. Everyone here is a prisoner of something: the walls of a cell, a system of apartheid and extermination, an obsession with political motherhood, or the symbolic burden of bringing a future life into the world. But such bitter truth is mitigated, if only for a moment, by what is arguably the most moving scene ever to feature sperm in cinema.

Sergio Fant

For Life, 2026
A Day in Nayapara, 2022
Bloody Eid, 2019
Life in a Suitcase, 2017
New Life, 2015
Coming Back, 2012