Arna's Children is a 2003

2003 in film

The year 2003 in film involved some significant events. Releases of sequels took place with movies like The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, 2 Fast 2 Furious, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions, Pokémon Heroes, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines,...

 Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

i/Dutch

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 documentary film

Documentary film

Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

 directed by Juliano Mer Khamis  and Danniel Danniel

Danniel Danniel

Danniel Danniel is an award winning Israeli film director, screenwriter and film editor living in the Netherlands since at least 1980.He graduated from the Netherlands Film and Television Academy in 1981...

 about a children's theater group in Jenin

Jenin

Jenin is the largest town in the Northern West Bank, and the third largest city overall. It serves as the administrative center of the Jenin Governorate and is a major agricultural center for the surrounding towns. In 2007, the city had a population of 120,004 not including the adjacent refugee...

 in the Palestinian territories

Palestinian territories

The Palestinian territories comprise the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Since the Palestinian Declaration of Independence in 1988, the region is today recognized by three-quarters of the world's countries as the State of Palestine or simply Palestine, although this status is not recognized by the...

 established by Arna Mer-Khamis

Arna Mer-Khamis

Arna Mer-Khamis was an Israeli Jewish political and human rights activist.- Biography :Mer was born in 1929, in Rosh Pinna, then in Mandate Palestine. She fought with the Palmach and Israel Defense Forces during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War...

, the director's mother, an Israeli Jewish political and human rights activist.

The film portrays the lives of Arna Mer-Khamis and the children members of the theater including Ala el-Sabagr, Zakaria Zbeide, Daud Zbeide, Majdi Shadi, Haifa Esteti, Nidal Swetti, Yussef Swetti, Mahmoud Kaneri, Khairia Fakhri and Ashraf Abu-Alheji.

The film won "Best Documentary Feature" 2004 Tribeca Film Festival

Tribeca Film Festival

The Tribeca Film Festival is a film festival founded in 2002 by Jane Rosenthal, Robert De Niro and Craig Hatkoff in a response to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the consequent loss of vitality in the TriBeCa neighborhood in Lower Manhattan.The mission of the festival...

.

Three of the theater children died in various operations or while resisting the Israeli army, namely Ala, Nidal, and Ashraf. Yussef committed a suicide attack in Hadera in 2001, murdering four civilians. Two other children, Daud and Zakaria were imprisoned.

The director of the film Juliano Mer Khamis was assassinated in Jenin on 4 April 2011 by masked militants.