APSA for Best Screenplay

Eran Riklis and Suha Arraf for ‘Etz Halimon’ (Lemon Tree)
Israel/France/Germany

Eran Riklis, one of Israel’s leading filmmakers, was born in Jerusalem, raised in the USA, Canada and Brazil, and graduated from The National Film School, England in 1982.  Married to Dina (a filmmaker), father of Tammy (a committed journalist) and Jonathan (a jazz pianist), Eran lives in Tel Aviv and works with the world. His film credits include: The Syrian Bride, 2004, winner of 18 international awards, and Zohar, Israel’s biggest box office success in the 90s. He has also directed and produced many TV films, series and documentaries. Lemon Tree is Riklis’ second collaboration with co-nominee, Suha Arraf. A Palestinian-Israeli, Suha is a graduate of the Tel Aviv Screenwriting Academy and has degrees from the Jerusalem and Haifa Universities. Besides The Syrian Bride and Lemon Tree collaborations with Riklis, Suha has written and directed several documentaries and worked as a journalist and researcher for many years.

“I have seen many movies on the topic of conflicts between Israel and Palestinian Territories.  It is very easy for the filmmakers to go on in such a way for such movies to be treated totally to serve the political purposes of the topics.  However, although the topic of this movie is also very clear, which is about two persons on both sides of an iron wire netting fence, an Israeli and a Palestinian Territories, yet when we look at this movie Lemon Tree, we have gradually forgotten the very big topic but been attracted by the story of four specific persons, who are the woman farmer and her solicitor on this side and the Defence Minister of Israel and his wife on the other side and these four persons have formed the whole conflicts between Israel and Palestinian Territories of today.  Generally speaking, the audience would judge who is right, who is wrong and who should do what… whereas this movie isn’t like that.  It is much deeper than that and this is about how people should treat and deal with each other, and the heroine, played by Abbass, the woman farmer, has best demonstrated how to treat the conflicts in a more humanistic way.” - Professor Zheng Dongtian (Jury Member)

“I felt that Lemon Tree really excelled at combining multiple stories simultaneously and for that reason we gave it the best screenplay award.” - Richard Rothschild (Jury Member)

“I'm particularly happy that it got the screenplay award because I thought the screenplay was very layered, it didn’t vilify any character.  You had the Israeli side and the Palestinian Territories side. It's very well written, extremely well written.  There's a lot of dignity in the film.” - Aparna Sen (Jury Member)

“What's interesting about the film is the sanity of it, the balance.  It's not polemical, it sees the issues on both sides and it really comes to a great understanding of what is human tragedy.” - Bruce Beresford (Jury President)