Khitam, A Gaza Band born Palestinian woman, was married off in an arranged match to an Israeli Arab, followed him to Israel and bore him six children. When her husband divorced her - in absentia – in the Sharia (Muslim) court he gained custody of the children and Khitam was left with nothing. She cannot contact the children and has no property. Although married to an Israeli, she does not have an Israeli citizenship. Now she is out on a dual battle, the most crucial of her life: against the Sharia court – which always rules in favor of the husband – and against the state, in an effort to gain a temporary permit to stay in Israel in a shelter for abused women, while fighting for custody of her children.
Awards
- Silver Award – Fippa-Biarritz International Film Festival, France, 2008
- Special Jury Award – Sole E Luna Int'l Doc Film Festival, Italy, 2008
- Best Documentary – DocAviv International Film Festival, Israel, 2007
Festivals
- Isratim Film Festival, Paris, 2009
- Zimbabwe Int'l Human Rights Film Festival, Africa, 2008
- Brussels Mediterranean Film Festival, Belgium, 2008
- PSBT Open Frame Int'l Film Festival, New Delhi, India, 2008
Additional info
Gallery
THREE TIMES DIVORCED
Essay by Helen Epstein
Boston Jewish Film Festival, 2008
…Three Times Divorced, a fascinating documentary that unceremoniously throws you into the life and mind of Khitam, an abused woman in the northern Negev. Khitam was born in Gaza and is married to an abusive Arab Israeli husband with whom she has six children. She lives in the cracks between legal systems. Under Israeli law, she is an illegal resident; under Arab religious law, she is subject to the patriarchal Sharia court. As it happens, Khitam has the face and expressiveness of a movie star and the director Ibtisam Mara'ana has made the most of both. I was mesmerized by this documentary and the unusual glimpse it gives us of a universal illness as well as of a usually unseen slice of contemporary Israel.
…"Three Times" Divorced tells the story of Khitam, a Palestinian woman whose Israeli Arab husband has divorced her, but their six children. She desperately wants them back, but the Shaira courts automatically side with her ex-husband, repeatedly taking decisions to delay custody hearings before she and her lawyer arrive…. Director and camera-operator Ibtisam Salh Ma'arana stays close to Khitam as she tries to negotiate these hurdles, and while te distraught
mother sometimes talks to the camera, for much of the time she is too wrapped up in weighing her options to take much notice of being filmed. This brings a stratling immediacy to the film, for instance when Khitam decides to take her children from their nursery school and flee to another city in a tense car journey that ends only in further desperation. As well as presenting an astonishingly strong central character, Three Timed Divorced sheds light on an aspect of Israeli society that is little seen in the West.
Ian Mundell, Dox Documentary Film Magazine, March, 2008