Filmmaker Roy Cohen tells the story of his life in Israel with his partner and son in the wake of the October 7 attacks. The couple had moved there because it was a good place to be a same sex couple starting a family. However, as violence escalated in the wake of the attacks, Cohen and his husband are forced to make some serious choices about their future, as he remembers a friend who he met in Maine, and was lost to the violence.
This is a gut punch film. A story with no easy answers and no easy through line, it’s a film that makes it very clear that what we are seeing on the TV news is nowhere near the whole story. There is more going on than can be covered in a two-minute news clip.
I’ve been wrestling with this film for a couple of weeks now. I mean that in the best sort of way. This is not a film that you can simply see and then move on. Instead this is a film that raises a ton of issues and thrashes about trying to sort them out. None of the answers, when we get an answer, are easy. Even the simplest and most basic such as “we agreed to leave if the violence came back, and it has. Are we actually going to leave?” isn’t simply answered since things have changed from when that agreement was made. This is a film that very clearly shows that even the simplest most obvious choices are not something that can be made simply.
I was and I am rocked. I am rocked so much that I have been staring at a blank screen for weeks now trying to explain how magnificent this film is. This is one of the best films of the situation is Israel because it doesn’t sugar coat anything, nor does it come in with any agenda except that of a family trapped between warring factions.
An absolute must see film, FAR FROM MAINE is highly recommended.
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