Garden

The Garden is a neighbourhood in Tel Aviv. However, it does not bear the slightest resemblance to Eden. This is a place where boys live in the street, making a living as prostitutes or by selling drugs. At the centre of this candid film is 17-year-old Nino, an illegal Palestinian, who has been locked up too often. His friend Dudu is an 18-year-old Arab Israeli. He acts as Nino’s protector, but has his own self-destructive demons to deal with. Both suffered troubled childhoods and live from day to day in the street. The line between a stable life and drug addiction or crime is thin, and life outside the “Garden” seems to remain an eternal dream. Adi Barash and Ruthie Shatz followed the two boys for a year, literally everywhere. They even smuggled microphones into customers’ cars. The unpolished portrait of the two mutually dependent friends is presented against the background of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the taboo on homosexuality and the tense relations between the streetwalkers and the authorities. Although the course of their lives is no source of optimism, the boys’ resilience and friendship leave light at the end of the tunnel. (DOK.fest München)