One Day After Peace

This documentary shows a mother's emotional search for reconciliation with the Palestinian sniper who killed her son in an attack on a police post in the Israeli-occupied territories. On a personal level, Robi Damelin tries to get in touch with her son's murderer through a letter, but she also wants to place her own loss in a wider context. 'I have been working for co-existence all my life.' That's why Damelin, who emigrated from South Africa to Israel in 1967, returns 40 years later to her homeland to find out if she, in her grief, can learn something from the reconciliation methods used in South Africa to tackle that nation's Apartheid past. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up in 1996, its goal to exchange amnesty for truth. Damelin meets victims and perpetrators who found reconciliation, and finds out that people are capable of both atrocities and great things. One Day after Peace carefully intertwines and balances the various viewpoints, news footage and narratives, doing justice to the complexity of seemingly irreconcilable conflicts. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)