Lemon Tree

Winner of the 2008 Berlin International Film Festival Audience Award and the Israeli Film Academy Award for best actress, Lemon Tree, with its subtle humor and sunny cinematography, is a delightful, yet devastating film.

In her late father’s 50-year-old lemon grove, in the West bank along the green line border with Israel, we meet Palestinian widow Salma, who lives a quiet life tending to her trees. When the Israeli Minister of Defense builds a house across the way, however, and then decides that her grove is a threat to his security, Salma’s life takes a bitter turn. Determined to save her trees, Salma finds a lawyer willing to help her fight against the military’s order to cut down the grove, and forms an improbable bond with a lonely woman named Mira—the Defense Minister’s wife.