Search Film, Company, People...

THE DEVIL'S DRIVERS

By Mohammed ABUGETH, Daniel CARSENTY

PALESTINE FILM INSTITUTE - as PROMO / CONS

Documentary - Post-Production 2018

Chased by the army, two Beduin smuggle Palestinian workers through the Negev desert. A portrait filmed over five years about men living on the edge in one the most fragile regions of the world.

- Year of production
- 2018
- Genres
- Documentary, Road movie
- Countries
- PALESTINE, GERMANY, FRANCE
- Languages
- ARABIC
- Budget
- 0 - 0.3 M$
- Duration
- 90 mn
- Director(s)
- Mohammed ABUGETH, Daniel CARSENTY
- Producer(s)
- Mohammed ABUGETH, Daniel CARSENTY
- Synopsis
- The area south of Hebron with its vast landscapes of biblical proportions is home to an indigenous population of Beduins. In their midst Israeli settlers have built highly fortified villages on the hilltops cutting the Palestinians from their properties.
  Exhausted through the years of conflict over land and water rights the Beduins today seek to make a living as migrant workers on construction sites in Israel.
  Hamouda and Ismael, two cousins, drive twice a day with their jeeps up to seven workers without permits into the border region hoping to find a way to cross the Separation Wall, which is still partly under construction in this area.
  In 2012 the cousins are 26 and 29 years old, reckless young gangsters taking risks and enjoying the thrills of life – modern-day versions of Robin Hood, using their extraordinary driving skills to help the poorest of the poor to find a livelihood.
  In and out of jail, spending the money that they earned on big houses and flashy cars, hanging out with their friends in the evenings smoking Shisha pipes, doing barbecue and listening to Egyptian Chaaby-pop – life seemed to them like an endless string of adventures.
  But with the years the economic situations of the population in the Westbank got more and more distressed until in October 2015 a new round of escalations began, which have cost until the Summer of 2016 more than 400 lives on both sides - suddenly the soldiers shoot to kill in the border region.
  Ismail, the younger cousin, used to be the most reckless driver of the region, but after becoming father for the first time in the summer of 2015 he decides to quit the smuggling business with the outbreak of the Intifada and starts a local construction company.
  His older cousin Hamouda decides to continue to work under more dangerous circumstances, but finds it impossible to cross the heavily guarded frontier. His only chance is to drop off the workers close to the Wall and co-ordinate with Israeli Beduins to pick them up.
  Hamouda who has been always proud of being an independent smuggler finds himself forced to cooperate with the Israeli mafia.
  Once a slim and handsome guy he has become over the years a disillusioned heavy set man, chain-smoking away his sleepless nights, bearing heavy under the responsibility of keeping a smuggling business alive during a civil war and being a good father to his kids.
  And Ismail who is working now in the construction business finds it very hard to earn a living during the uprising with almost no investment into Palestinian construction.
  And then he is offered a lot of money to drive one more time - the next day special force arrests him. He is accused of assisting the first ISIS attack in Tel Aviv which left four people dead.
  The film spans an arch from the easy-going days of smuggling in 2012 to the almost unbearable hard-ships of survival during the Intifada in 2016 portraying two Beduin cousins on their struggle for independence and a decent way of life.