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Garden
Original Title
Gan- Director: Adi Barash; Ruth Shatz
CGiii Comment
Exploitation? Perhaps.
With no evidence of a brain, all cock and a bizarre sense of honour, these kids are a total mess and no matter how many documentaries are made - it won't help them one iota.
It's a crazy world - watch it to see a friendship that is truly touching.
And, a way of life that is thoroughly unrewarding.
Touchingly sad.
Trailer...
The(ir) Blurb...
The Garden is a desolate section of Tel Aviv where young gay prostitutes and drug addicts gather. It's a territory for the dispossessed (the irony of its name not lost on anyone who enters or escapes) and for pickups, drug deals, and clashes with the law. Over the course of one year, filmmakers Ruthie Shatz and Adi Barash follow two young men who have made the Garden their home: Nino, a 17-year-old Palestinian living illegally in Israel, in and out of jail and reformatories; and Dudu, an Arab-Israeli self- destructing under the debilitation of drug addiction. The young men give Shatz and Barash tremendous access into the most intimate aspects of their lives. The filmmakers, ever mindful of the trust they have earned, create a powerfully honest film, affording Nino and Dudu respect and dignity all too often denied them in their daily lives.