The director of Arna's Children, Juliano Mer Khamis, first met Ala el-Sabagr at his house that was just destroyed by the IOF (as shown on the second row of pics). During the Intifada he joined Jenin's Al-Aqsa brigade and survived the Battle of Jenin. Two weeks after the birth of his first child, Ziyad, he was assassinated by israel (as shown by the last picture on the right).

“I became good at pretending. I became so good that after a while the lines blurred between my truth and fiction. And sometimes, when I did a really good job of pretending, I even fooled myself.”

“It never ends, the bruise of being —”