‘The Sea’ Review: Israel’s Oscar Entry Is a Moving Father-Son Tale in the Vein of ‘Bicycle Thieves’

Government

Israel’s mostly Arabic-language international feature submission “ The Sea ” offers a deceptively simple premise: a headstrong 12-year-old boy from a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank illegally enters Israel on his own to see the sea. Without being judgmental, director-writer Shai Carmeli Pollak uses this foundation to expose painful realities of the occupation, as well as the indifference to them displayed by many of those in Tel Aviv’s urban “bubble.” Made as a collaboration