revlindacarter A blood test reveals that an 18-year-old Israeli is not the son of his parents. The hospital investigates and discovers a well-worn story plot: two boys switched at birth. Only in this case the switch pushes both families into existential crises: Who am I? Who is my son? Why? because the "other" son was born to Palestinian Arabs. The conflicts between peoples and cultures is addressed here, but I found the most significant part of the story when each character begins to explore their own identity. The characters handle their crises with love and care for the sons. The acting and direction are flawless. English subtitles. The pace may be a little slow for American audiences, but have patience, you will be enriched with this film.

emuir-1 For some reason, European films only use subtitles when the characters are not speaking in English. As the actors usually have strong accents they are unintelligible when they do use English. I also had a feeling that even when the actors were speaking in Arabic, French or Hebrew we were not always getting subtitles. Captioning was greatly missed.The other big problem was the miscasting. Jules Sutrik does not look Palestinian, being too light skinned, and did not look at all like his biological brother Bilal. Likewise, Mehdi Dehbi was just a little too dark and more strongly resembled Bilal than either of his Jewish 'parents'. The film would have worked much better if the actors had alternated the roles, as it was I found the miscasting distracting to the point of being unbelievable, rather like a vanity piece where an actor shows off by playing against type or sex. The switched at birth plot is as old as Methuselah and a favorite of Shakespeare, Gilbert and Sullivan and many others. Although it was interesting, the storyline became very corny at times with the families coming together just a little too quickly.

Larry Silverstein I found this rather unique film, directed by Lorraine Levy, to be an engaging and touching drama.When Joseph Silberg (Jules Sitruk) goes for his pre-induction physical into the Israeli army, his blood work shocks his parents, Orith and Alon (Emmaneulle Devos/ Pascal Elbe), when his type A+ cannot genetically be possible with theirs of A-. When their doctor investigates it, he finds out that, at the beginning of the Gulf War in 1991, right after Orith gave birth to Joseph, the hospital in Haifa was evacuated during a SCUD missile attack.The hospital mistakenly switched her baby boy with a Palestinian woman's baby and DNA tests have confirmed this. The Palestinian woman, Leila (Areen Omari) had been visiting a relative in the area but is now living in the Israeli occupied West Bank with her husband Said (Khalifa Natour), the boy Yacine (Mehdi Dehbi) now nearly 18 years old and the rest of her family.When the parents of the two boys are brought together in the doctor's office, it triggers an enormous amount of emotion and dramatic interplay. I thought it was fascinating to see how each family member reacted to the shocking news, as well as each of their respective communities. Could decades of conflict and mistrust be overcome by kinship and family? I'll let the viewers see the results for themselves.All in all, I thought Levy and her co-writers did an excellent job of presenting the material in a very engrossing manner. The acting, I thought was first rate as well. Even if it is a little contrived, I enjoyed this different type of drama.

richard-1787 I'm surprised that there are only two reviews - now three - of this movie on IMDb. It got a very good review when it played up in Cleveland, and since I couldn't make the trip up there to see it, I waited and rented it from Netflix. It was worth the wait.The situation is straight out of an early Shakespeare comedy: two babies are switched at birth by mistake in a maternity ward, such that a Jewish Israeli family raises a young Arab and a Palestinian family raises a young Jewish Israeli. Just short of their 18th birthdays, they learn the truth.The first part of the movie deals with the reactions of the four parents. All four actors give truly moving, first-rate performances. The Jewish father is an officer in the Israeli army, someone who has spent his life fighting Arabs. Still, he is torn apart by what he perceives as the loss of his son. The Arab father doesn't know how to react: is he now harboring a hated Israeli in his own poor home? But he, too, loves his son very much, and cannot deal with the thought of losing him.The two mothers also experience a feeling of loss, but are able to speak to each other in ways that the two fathers, for political reasons, cannot.The son of the Jewish couple finds acceptance in the Palestinian family through a mutual love of music. It is less clear how the son of the Arab couple will fit in the Jewish family. Will Yacine be able to tolerate living with an Israeli army officer? How will his family deal with that? The movie, as I said, is based on a clichéd theatrical device, but there is nothing clichéd about the acting or the script here: it all seems very real, and often very intense. It never seems fake. Unlike what the other two reviews suggest, not everything is resolved here by the end of the movie. That would have been too pat, too American-TV.I strongly recommend this movie. It's really well done.