Empathy for a terrorist is difficult to imagine but this is what Samira almost provokes. Anat Barzilay, a well known actress from Israel is Samira, a victim of her culture and terrorist who tries to suicide bomb a cafe, but survives herself and kills a child. Although the show edges towards portraying Samira as victim and not terrorist it doesn’t quite manage. In exploring interesting aspects of Islam, Samira takes a sympathetic stance, but full empathy for the character was still hard to feel because of the choice she makes. This meant that the connection with the audience was lost. The performance takes the form of an interrogation broken up by film footage of other characters talking about the incident. In this form the series of events that lead up to the bombing show how Samira is rejected by her family and is brainwashed into carrying out the suicide bombing, with the promise of saving her family and going to heaven.Barzilay gives a convincing and emotional performance, unfortunately not the case for the recorded voices of the investigators and the majority of the film actors. The performances were plagued with wooden delivery, however this was not the biggest problem with the cinematography. Cuts to different angles were erratic and too frequent, giving the films an amateur feel of trying to be to 'dramatic', even when the simplest, unimportant lines were being delivered.This production deals with interesting and new ideas about terrorism and develops ones understanding Islamic culture as linked to terrorism. However the step from disgracing your family and yourself to killing innocent people for redemption is not made any clearer as a thought process.
