City of Borders

My first stop at this year's HotDocs film festival was Jerusalem, courtesy of Yun Suh's eye-opening City of Borders. Jerusalem's only gay bar, Shushan, is the thread that unites Suh's colourful subjects: Adam, a former Israeli soldier who was stabbed while marching in Jerusalem's pride parade; Boodi, a Muslim who faces life-threatening persecution in his hometown on the West Bank; Sa'ar, Shushan's founder, who also fights for queer rights on Jerusalem's overwhelmingly orthodox city council; and Samira and Ravit, a lesbian Israeli/Palestinian couple who struggle for acceptance from their families and community.

Most poignant was the film's tense opening scene, which features Boodi and his friends clambering over fences and through barbed wire in pitch darkness to cross the strictly guarded border separating Palestine and Jerusalem, home of the Utopian Shushan. In Shushan, Boodi says, there are no borders: gays and lesbians, Arabs and Jews dance, mingle, and love one another; one night at Shushan is, to Boodi, worth the danger of being arrested for trespassing. Unlike others, Boodi maintains, he and his friends don't sneak across the border to drop bombs -- they're just looking for a fun night in a space where they are at total liberty to be themselves.

The film is at times moving and upsetting, but also quite funny. In spite of their politically and religiously loaded relationship, Samira and Ravit in particular maintain an incredibly admirable sense of humour, warmth, and strength of will. Boodi, the most flamboyant of the bunch, alternately charms with his closed-door bedroom dance parties and devastates when, ultimately, he must give up his homeland and family to live the life he desires with the freedom he craves. And Sa'ar, who persists with his work on city council in spite of frequent death threats, faces difficult decisions about Shushan's future when he begins to struggle financially.

An ode to the human spirit and a reminder of the relative freedoms we enjoy as Canadians, City of Borders is definitely worth a look, at HotDocs or on DVD. In the meantime, you can check out the trailer right here: