The Day After

This is a work-in-progress screening. Audiences can participate in a post-screening conversation with the filmmakers, who are seeking viewer feedback as they work to finish the film. 

How do two groups of people overcome their violently entwined past? How does a person reconcile their actions with their hope for a better future? How can peace be made to last? These are the questions asked in The Day After, a documentary about the long and arduous process of resolving a geopolitical conflict. A group of Israelis and Palestinians travels to Belfast, where the story of The Troubles is recounted by witnesses, victims and participants alike. These testimonies—of military checkpoints and bombs on every street corner—convey the long road to the eventual Good Friday Agreement. The group’s goal is to understand how to replicate a political triumph, to find something to bring back home with them.  The Day After is a film about the potential for conversation to redirect history; it is both an eye-opening historical inquiry and a clear-eyed analysis of the present, ingeniously structured by directors Aziz Abu Sarah & Yuval Orr. Above all else, this is an essential story about our capacity for understanding whilst surrounded by ruin. —David Cohn

Yuval Orr is an Israeli filmmaker whose work spans the gamut from documentary to fiction and multimedia. His work has been nominated for numerous international awards, including the IDFA DocLab Competition for Digital Storytelling and the BANFF Rockie Award for Best Interactive Content, and screened at film festivals around the world, including IDFA and DOK.Leipzig, among others.

Aziz Abu Sarah is a Palestinian peace builder, cultural educator and New York Times bestselling author whose conflict resolution work has earned him the titles of National Geographic Explorer and Ted Fellow. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Al Arabiya, among others. He has been named one of the 500 most influential Muslims in the World by the Royal Strategic Centre in Jordan each year since 2010.