Family Defined in Different Ways
Two seemingly different films open in theaters on Feb. 24. The first, called “Juniper,” is universal in its subject matter—family, healing, growing. Director/writer Matthew Saville approached this story through the eyes of a resentful teen. The growth and change, as imperceptible as it seems to be, is seismic in the end, giving it even more resonance as we watch everyone change. The second film, “Cinema Sabaya,” written and directed by Israeli filmmaker Orit Fouks Rotem, is about a group of women, Palestinian and Israeli, who come together at a local community center to learn about filmmaking. As they begin their personal storytelling journeys, we watch them become a family, dealing with similarities and differences in order to grow.