French pay TV channel Canal+ shall be internet hosting a Cinema for Peace broadcast occasion on primetime Tuesday night (Feb. 17), kicking off with Loris Lai’s “Les Enfants de Gaza: Les Vagues de la Liberté” (“How Children Roll”), adopted by a dwell debate with the movie’s two leads.
The 2003-set drama follows two 11-year-old boys — Mahmud, a Palestinian residing in Gaza, and Alon, an Israeli — whose shared ardour for browsing cuts via the violence surrounding them. Set through the Second Intifada, the exhibits how the 2 children kind a bond that deepens underneath the steering of Dan, a 30-year-old former surf champion who turns into their mentor. As tensions escalate, Mahmud is compelled right into a selection that would alter the course of his life. The movie was made earlier than Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2024, and earlier than the outbreak of the conflict in Gaza.
Written by Lai and Dahlia Heyman, the movie is freely impressed by Nicoletta Bortolotti’s youngsters’s novel “Sulle Onde Della Libertà,” revealed by Ragazzi Mondadori.
“How Children Roll,” which Canal+ praised for “its common message of peace,” was produced underneath the unique title “I Bambini di Gaza” by Eagle Photos‘ Tarak Ben Ammar, who’s behind the 2024 Italian field workplace hit “The Boy With the Pink Pants,” and Elda Ferri, whose credit embrace Roberto Benigni’s Oscar-winning “Life is Stunning.” The unique rating consists by Nicola Piovani, the composer of “Life Is Stunning” who gained an Academy Award for the movie.
“Children are the brand new generations and the one actual hope for a distinct future, a greater future… peace. Even when it’s solely a dream, we have now to imagine it,” mentioned Lai. “Ennio Flaiano as soon as mentioned: ‘Who refuses to dream, is compelled to saddle with actuality.” We are able to’t saddle with this actuality, we should dream, we should imagine,” he added.
The movie gained finest directorial debut on the 2025 David di Donatello Awards, Italy’s high movie honors; in addition to finest worldwide movie on the Beverly Hills Movie Pageant and was chosen on the Santa Barbara Worldwide Movie Pageant.
The post-broadcast debate on Canal+ – hosted by outstanding TV hosts Sonia Mabrouk and Laurie Cholewa — will reunite Lai with the younger leads of the movie, Mikhael Fridel and Marwan Hamdan, alongside Hugues Dewavrin, VP of Les Écrans de la Paix, and filmmakers Alexandre Arcady, Pascal Elbé and Jawad Rhalib. The dialogue will discover the movie’s origins, its themes of fraternity, and the broader query of how cinema can construct bridges.
The initiative follows a dwell screening of the movie that Canal+ hosted at Paris’ Mac Mahon theater, the place center faculty college students engaged the director and solid in a Q&A, underscoring the movie’s resonance with youthful audiences.
