A Kind of Family

As the world learns to live again in the midst of the pandemic, for many Arabic-speaking LGBTQ+ people living in Montreal, this is just a period of time like any other. When you've fled homophobic violence in your home country and endured a painful migratory journey, or you still face social prejudices stemming from intercultural and intergenerational conflicts, surviving social isolation is nothing new.

Zero Degrees of Separation breaks with the sensationalistic media coverage of the violence in the Middle East by documenting the everyday lives of two mixed gay Palestinian-Israeli couples. Faced with modern injustices of work visas, checkpoints, harassment and prejudices, these courageous and outspoken individuals resist attempts at oppresssion and take small steps each day to build a sense of peace, mutual respect and hope. Drawing the past into the present, the director interweaves her own rich narrative of growing up with Zionist grandparents who were intimately involved in the founding of the state of Israel. Their archival home movies that evoke an idealized Israel of the 1950s now take on a haunting quality that summons larger questions of humanity, conflict and nationalist aspiration.

In Crown Prince, Frank Robinson abuses his wife verbally and batters her physically, with frightening consequences not only for her, but also for their sons, Billy and Freddy. A thought-provoking drama, this film explores the complex problems teenagers face in dealing with domestic violence, and shows how one family begins the healing process.