"Fighting the jihad with the pen is the same as dying for the jihad," says Mahmoud, a young Lebanese man in a new documentary dedicated to Edward Said, the Palestinian-American intellectual and advocate for the Palestinian cause.
"Out of Place," by veteran director Makoto Sato — which retraces the late professor's steps through Lebanon, Israel, the West Bank, Egypt and the United States — is as much about Said's life as it is about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Sato shot almost 300 hours of footage over 12 months to compile the 137-minute film, spending time on both sides of the conflict: with a Palestinian family in the Ein el-Hilweh camp in Lebanon, residents of the Kibbutz Dan in Israel, Israeli teenagers and Palestinian tobacco growers in the segregated Galilean town of Ma'alot-Tarshiha.