Death in Gaza

In the spring of 2003 director James Miller and reporter Saira Shah traveled to the Middle East. "We wanted to record the way in which ordinary children grow up in extraordinary conditions," says Saira Shah at the start of the film. The main figures in their film are Ahmed, Mohammed, and Najla, three friends living in the city of Rafah on the border of the dangerous Gaza Strip. Ahmed and Mohammed spend their free time all-too-convincingly playing soldiers or throwing stones at the Israeli tanks and bulldozers. Their deeply-ingrained hatred towards Israel, created by the conditions in which they grew up and a well-developed system of brainwashing, suggests that they are well on their way to becoming suicide bombers in a few years. During the making of the documentary, however, a shocking event occurs. Director and cameraman James Miller, the father of two small children, is shot to death by an Israeli soldier. Miller becomes another victim of the conflict whose destructive impact on the lives of Palestinian children he was trying to faithfully record.