Laughter. Serenity.

"The shortest way to serenity is through laughter."

The 6th annual International Human Rights Film Festival of Geneva is currently under way. Tonight, I was able to catch Face2Face, a documentary about a French photographer, Marco, and street artist, JR, who decide to put up huge portraits of Israelis and Palestinians next to each other all across polarized cities such as Bethlehem, Ramallah, and Jerusalem. They videotaped the journey and actual posting of portraits as well as the reactions from passer-byers. And they often polled people on who was the Palestinian and who was the Israeli.

What I loved about the film was that they didn't go into a deep history about the issues, managing to make it a mostly unpolitical documentary. Through the simple, yet powerful, statement of the possibility of "neighbors" being real neighbors, they were able to catch the visceral reactions of Israelis and Palestinians alike. For most, there was sincere interest in the beginning, mostly in the form of laughter. But once enlightened to the idea behind the photos, some became visibly disturbed.

The film really brings out the absurdity of it all. It's an incredible expression of just how perverse, yet beautiful this world is.

Photo taken from the face2faceproject.com website.