DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT While working on my master’s degree in film and television at Southern Illinois University, I read a newspaper article about a bombing in Jerusalem. Shortly thereafter, I saw an article in Newsweek about the event, with a close-up photograph of the two girls on the cover. I couldn’t stop looking at them! The more I read, the more I realized that this tragic story ironically represents everything I feel regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As I started to learn more about the girls, it struck me that in a different time and place, they might have been best friends or even sisters who were simply out shopping together. Faith, or fate, brought each of them to the end of her life in such a tragic manner! I tried to put myself in Ayat’s place. I tried to understand what would lead a beautiful girl just starting her life and with plans for the future, to wake up one morning, take a bag of explosives and put an end to her life — and in the process end the lives of others. I contacted the mothers of the girls — Avigail Levy and Um Samir al-Akhras — and found them to be two wonderful women, each struggling to cope with her daughter’s death. They opened their hearts and shared their pain with me. This is where the real challenge began: Could I help close the gap between them or would cultural differences and hate ultimately stand in the way of reconciliation? Are their lives permanently unbridgeable in light of pictures/posters praising the young Palestinian’s actions and her parents’ hesitant pride as a result? The more I got to know the mothers and their stories, the more I felt a deepening desire, along with Avigail Levy, to embark on a journey in search of the answer to the most basic question, Why? The highlight of the journey — for all of us — is an emotional meeting between Avigail and Um Samir. Just as seeing the pictures of Rachel and Ayat — so similar and yet so different — drew me into their story in the first place, the dream of a meeting between the two women stirred me to take my own personal journey with this film. I believe that theirs is a story that needs to be told, in part because we can all identify with the individuals in this tragedy. Most of us have all been 17, after all. Hilla Medalia, Director/Producer