Free Zone

Free Zone is a 2005 film directed by Amos Gitai. Shot in Israel and Jordan, the Israeli-Belgian-French-Spanish production stars Israeli Jewish actress Hanna Laslo, Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass, and Israeli-American actress Natalie Portman. It is the second film of Gitai's "Border" or "Frontier" trilogy. The film made its debut at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival on May 19, 2005. It was released in Israel on June 9, 2005, and then appeared at numerous other film festivals throughout the rest of the year, having a limited release on December 16, 2005, in the United States. Plot Rebecca (Natalie Portman) is a young American woman who has lived in Jerusalem for several months. She has just ended her marriage with a Jewish man, Breitberg, after he tells her of having raped a Palestinian woman while he was a soldier. Rebecca herself has a Jewish father but a gentile mother and so, despite her Jewish upbringing, is not considered a Jew according to religious tradition. Crying openly, Rebecca enters a tourist cab, driven by a Jewish Israeli woman, Hanna (Hanna Laslo), who is the daughter of Holocaust survivors. Hanna's destination, to which Rebecca agrees to accompany her, is the free-trade zone or "Free Zone" near Jordan's borders with Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia to collect money owed to her husband, who has recently been wounded in a rocket attack. Upon reaching the Free Zone, they meet up with Laila (Hiam Abbass), a Palestinian woman who serves as the contact for Hanna's husband's black market partnership with a man known as "the American." The three women set off on a tense journey to retrieve Hanna's money and to find the American's son, Walid, who may have absconded with the money. The film is bookended by a rendition of the traditional Passover song "Had Gadya", performed by Chava Alberstein. The song "Ain Ani" by Shotei Hanevua also plays in the taxi at the end of the film.