The Heart of Jenin

The Heart of Jenin recounts the true story of Ismael Khatib, a refugee in the Jenin refugee camp in northern West Bank. In 2005, his eleven-year-old son Ahmed suffers fatal head shots by Israeli soldiers who mistake him for an armed Palestinian due to a toy weapon. After physicians in a hospital in Haifa declare Ahmed brain-dead, Ismael has to decide if his son's organs should be donated. His decision (with his wife's consent) demonstrates humanity at the moment of his greatest sorrow. Thus, the Palestinian enables the survival of Israeli children in the midst of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The film accompanies Ismael Khatib on his visits to the families of three children who survived thanks to Ahmed's organ donation. The different encounters – with an Orthodox Jewish, a Druze and a Bedouin family, as well as with soldiers at checkpoints – always reflect the situation in the conflict-laden region.

The film was produced by production company Eikon Südwest in cooperation with broadcasting companies SWR and arte as well as other production companies, German Filmperspektive and Israeli Mozer Film Ltd. It was sponsored by MFG Filmförderung Baden-Württemberg. The film was shown at various film festivals including the Toronto International Film Festival in 2008.

Cinema Jenin before renovations

The film itself, as well as Ismael Khatib's decision to donate his killed son's organs, attracted worldwide attention. The international interest in the film and Ismael Khatib's actions inspired the Italian city of Cuneo to found a youth centre in Jenin's refugee camp. There had been a lack of cultural institutions especially for young people in Jenin. Director Marcus Vetter, who had spent a longer period of time in Jenin during the filming, also began to work with young people and to offer film workshops. In Ismael Khatib's youth center, the young people worked on their own short films - and realized that there was no place to show them. Together with Ismael Khatib and his translator Fakhri Hamad, Marcus Vetter became aware of the old cinema in the heart of the city of Jenin, which had been closed since the beginning of the first Intifada in 1987. Thus came about the idea of creating the project Cinema Jenin, which initially aimed at reopening the old cinema and has meanwhile grown to become one of the largest social entrepreneurship companies in the West Bank.

In 2010, Ismael Khatib was awarded the Hessian Peace Prize in the Wiesbaden State Parliament in Germany. For the first time ever, this prize was awarded to a simple man and not to a world leader. The laudatory speech was given by the former Israeli ambassador to Germany, Avi Primor, who described how difficult Khatib's gesture of peace had been in the tense situation in Israel. "Most people would have thought of revenge," Primor said. Khatib resisted this impulse even when families of the saved Israeli children received him in a hostile manner. Primor quoted Jewish and Islamic beliefs, stating that in both religions the idea exists that whoever saves a life saves the whole world. "You saved the world five times". Primor ended his speech with a simple gesture, his last word being "Shukran", which in Arabic, Khatib's language, means "thank you".

• Israeli–Arab organ donations

• Film on the project page of Cinema Jenin
• The Heart of Jenin at IMDb
• The Heart of Jenin at AllMovie