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Ayat Al-Akhras was an 18-year-old living in a Palestinian refugee camp. She was beautiful, an A student, and already engaged to be married.

Rachel Levy was a 17-year-old Israeli living in Jerusalem.  She was striking, free spirited, and a loving daughter and sister.

On March 29, 2002, Rachel's mother asked her to go to a local supermarket to pick up ingredients for Sabbath dinner. While Rachel was in the store, Ayat entered the building and detonated a purse full of explosives, killing herself, a security guard and Rachel. The two girls looked so remarkably alike that pathologists had difficulty correctly reassembling their remains. When Newsweek magazine placed their pictures side by side on its cover, many readers suddenly perceived the conflict in the Middle East less as an abstract issue of politics and more as a human tragedy of needlessly wasted lives. 

Hilla Medalia is a talented young Israeli filmmaker who was completing her master's degree in the United States at the time of the bombing. Almost immediately after the incident, she began work on a documentary about Rachel and Ayat and their families. A short student film (Daughters of Abraham) eventually blossomed into To Die in Jerusalem, a heart-rending and thought-provoking feature currently airing on HBO, screening at film festivals, and available for purchase online. The film focuses on the mothers of the two girls and climaxes with an emotionally charged meeting between them—via satellite, even though they only live a few miles apart.

To Die in Jerusalem is a film about an ancient and enduring conflict embodied by two heart-broken mothers and two lives cut tragically short. It leaves viewers moved and frustrated and anxious for change. CT Movies had an opportunity to speak with Medalia about her five-year quest to tell a devastating and important story.

How did you become aware of the tragic events of March 29, 2002?

Hilla Medalia: At the time of the bombing I was a student at Southern Illinois University. I wanted to do a documentary about the Middle East for my thesis film, and I was basically looking for stories. Then this bombing happened, and I saw the picture of the two girls in the newspaper, and I was really stunned and touched and moved. And I thought that it could be a good story.

Hilla Medalia

At the time I never thought about the meeting between the mothers. I just wanted to talk to the mothers [separately] and tell the story of the two girls. Actually, the first time that I met Avigail, the Israeli girl's mother, she told me that she wanted to meet the parents of the Palestinian girl. But at the time I wanted to graduate, and also I felt it was a bigger journey than I could document then. In essence I needed to prepare myself and also the characters and everyone else involved. I wasn't ready [for the mothers to meet].

So I created the short Daughters of Abraham. And then it won the Angelus Award [for student filmmakers], and through that I met John and Ed Priddy from Boise, Idaho. They wanted to help me make a feature-length film, so they gave me the initial money to do To Die in Jerusalem. And then at a later time HBO got in the picture, and I got a grant.

How is To Die in Jerusalem different from Daughters of Abraham?

Daughters of Abraham is a very naïve look, and it's basically just interviewing the two mothers and some other footage. There is no meeting. The story is told with a very optimistic voice.

I matured through this film. To me, To Die in Jerusalem is a real depiction of the current situation, and it's a microcosm for the whole conflict.

Does it feel like this story has dominated your life for the last six years?

On and off, yeah. When I started, I really just wanted to make a film for school, and I was hoping to graduate in May and maybe get it aired on the local affiliate. I never thought it would have such a wide reach. The first night on HBO, maybe half a million people watched it. And now it's being screened all over the world and there are millions of people watching the film. It's pretty amazing.

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