A Bottle in the Gaza Sea

Tal (Agathe Bonitzer) is the 17-year-old daughter of recent French immigrants to Israel who live in Jerusalem. Following a bomb attack on a local café, she throws a bottle into the sea near Gaza with a message asking for an explanation. Naïm (Mahmoud Shalaby), a sensitive but aimless 20-year-old Palestinian living in Gaza, discovers the bottle and tries to answer Tal's question by initiating an email correspondence. Their mutual suspicion soon develops into a tender friendship. == About the film ==

The film is based on the bestselling book by Valérie Zenatti, a Jewish woman who immigrated to Israel from France at age 13 and returned to France after completing her military service. Similarly to the film, the book explores the bond between Tal, a sixteen-year-old Israeli, and Naim, a twenty-year-old Palestinian. The story unfolds after a bombing in Tal’s neighborhood, where a young woman loses her life just before her wedding. Deeply affected, Tal writes down her feelings and urges her brother, Eyton, to toss the letter, enclosed in a bottle, into the Gaza Sea. Naim, who calls himself "Gazaman," discovers the letter and replies via email, sparking a cross-boundary exchange of thoughts and emotions. Since filming in Gaza was not possible, the Gaza portions of the film were shot in Jisr az-Zarqa village. ==Cast==