It tackles one of the world’s most entrenched disputes, but already The Narrow Bridge has achieved the seemingly impossible: uniting the families of people killed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Since premiering at the 2022 San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award, Esther Takac’s 76-minute examination of grief has welcomed audiences directly affected by the conflict on both sides.

The Narrow Bridge tracks the journeys of four people who lost a child or parent in the violence learning to transform their trauma into understanding and ultimately reconciliation. All are in a grassroots movement which has faced criticism in both territories due to its commitment to empathy.  

The Narrow Bridge has since screened over 20 times during the Jewish International Film Festival, where it also won the Audience Award, and Tel Aviv’s Solidarity Human Rights Film Festival where bereaved Palestinian and Israeli family members attended together. Already, feedback from screenings point to changes in people’s attitudes including reduced negative stereotypes and increased empathy for ‘the other’. The film has promoted intercultural understanding and increased knowledge around the effects of trauma and the possibility of post-traumatic growth. It has nurtured hope and offered innovative pathways to reconciliation and conflict resolution, as well as awareness about people-to-people peace building projects.  

The film is still on a global film festival circuit and a speaking tour will bring two of the main participants in the film to Australia to coincide with the Sydney Writers’ Festival and to speak at the Wheeler Centre.