Diameter of the Bomb (NR)

synopsis

"Diameter of the Bomb" is a feature-length cinema documentary which focuses on a suicide bomb that shook Jerusalem one summer morning in June 2002. The film combines forensic footage released for the first time by the Israeli army, Hamas military video, the bomber's home movie footage and stunning filming in High Definition across Israel and the Palestinian territories. "Diameter of the Bomb" is part-thriller -- following Israeli police, secret service and military as they try unsuccessfully to prevent the attack and mercilessly track down the terrorist cell behind it -- and part mystery, as friends and relatives struggle to piece back together fragments of their own lives and of loved ones killed in the blast. At the heart of the film are five central characters: a schoolgirl who had come to Israel from war-torn Ethiopia, the young wife of a gravestone carver, the only son of an elderly Arab-Israeli worker, a young dancer identified only by her swimsuit, and the suicide bomber himself. With unprecedented access, the filmmakers took their cameras inside Israeli prisons, commando units, Palestinian refugee camps and hospital trauma wards, capturing countless everyday situations across Israel and Palestine and following the diameter of the bomb and its awful trajectory of human suffering.