Image of Victory

1948, Cairo, Egypt. Hassanin, a young and idealistic Egyptian documentary filmmaker, travels with a Moslem Brotherhood platoon to the holy land. The mission: help Palestinian villagers who have been evicted by newcomer Israelis from lands they have cultivated for decades. Hassanin has high cinematic ambitions. He gets his inspiration by Frank Capra’s Why We Fight, a film that focuses on individual stories of young men who took up the good fight.

The platoon is stationed on a hill overlooking an Israeli kibbutz. There are the occasional sporadic acts of belligerence from both sides, but mostly there is the sheer exuberance of youth in evidence on both sides. Passion, jealousy, ambition, kindness, mischief, longing and desire are rampant on the hill and at the kibbutz. Hassanin documents the reality that gives insight into the quirky side of human experience, until the demand for an image of victory becomes urgent.