Synopsis
Beirut, 1982: a young Palestinian refugee and an Israeli fighter pilot form a tentative bond in their attempt to make their way across war-torn Lebanon back to their home.
Your Movie Library
Cast
- Stephen DorffYoni
- Ashraf BarhomLead PLO Fighter
- Alice TaglioniLeclair
- Abdallah El AkalFahed (Ziko)
- Loai NofiAboudi
- Tarik KoptySeedo
- Jony ArbidAbu-Fahed
- Mira AwadIm Ahmed
- Eitan LondnerIlan
- Morad HassanRami
Recommendations
- 60
Total Film
Neatly juxtaposes the beauty of the landscape with the enmities it engenders. - 55
NPR
Zaytoun is different: This time, the director allows his characters to cross the frontier. That makes for a story that's sweeter, but also less convincing. - 50
The Playlist
Despite some great character work, the film's journey comes across as pedestrian at best. - 40
The Guardian
It's quite a sweet idea, with a liberal attempt at balance, though Palestinian audiences may query the idea of making their half of this equation a child, and Fahed's motivation for defying his elders in quite so disloyal and dangerous a way, is never convincingly explained. - 40
Time Out
The fact that the film’s title is an Arabic word for “olive,” as in holding out said branch to your foes, gives you a sense of what Israeli filmmaker Eran Riklis (Lemon Tree) is going for: a melodrama with a do-we-all-not-bleed? moral. - 40
The Hollywood Reporter
The film’s facile message of cross-cultural unity owes more to fairy tale than reality, but the action is slick and the story gripping. - 30
Village Voice
Alternating abruptly between road-trip comedy and war-through-a-child's-eyes melodrama, the film's tonal inconsistency prevents the story from gelling. - 30
The Dissolve
Though Dorff isn’t the only thing wrong with Zaytoun, he is still its biggest liability, and the rare case where one miscast role ruins a film’s essential premise.
