Toronto Film Festival Dailies

THE TASTE OF APPLES IS RED

TIFF 2022

With Director: Ehab Tarabieh

By Emmanuel Itier

An important peace activist and philosopher, A.J Muste, wrote: “There is no way to peace, Peace is the Way”. Ehab Tarabieh is embracing this philosophy with his new film, ‘The Taste of Apple is Red’, and how we can transform conflict into peace, how peace has to become the new state of mind, of consciousness, so we can move forward onto a planet of “one people, one world”. That is the attempt of such a beautiful movie and one can only salute and support the brave vision of Mr. Tarabieh. Let’s hope the world awakens into the reality that we should all drop our weapon, our hate, our difference and unite into a spirit of Peace and Love.

Q:  Tell us about the inspiration for this very emotional movie?

Ehab: It was very important for me to tell such a story about what is going on at the border between Israel and Syria. It is a very personal and emotional movie and I wanted to show what is going on over there. Hopefully it helps people understand better what is going in this place of the world.

Q: How hard was it to make this movie?

Ehab: The main difficulty was to figure out how to tell this complicated story. A lot of people don’t know anything about this community and this story, so it’s not simple to explain the situation. How to tell a story about a war you don’t live into. How to tell a story that the medias might just talk about from a distance. It’s hard not to confuse people even more about the situation and to try to tell them clearly, or as clearly, what happened and what is going on.

Q: At the end what do you want people to understand while watching this movie, any messages?

Ehab: What is important for me is that we keep talking about what is happening in Syria. This dictatorship is still killing people and it must be known and told. There hasn’t been much in the news for the last two years so, one could think it’s not happening anymore, but it is! For me it’s an obligation for this community, in the Golem Heights, to tell their story. A story of occupation for so many years and how they suffer from this dictatorship. I hope people will become aware of and know about it. I hope maybe there is a take of consciousness about what is going on.

Q: What does Tiff can achieve for you and this movie?

Ehab:  The main goal is to be exposed and to tell this story to the world. So the world can know about this situation. Tiff is one of the biggest festival, biggest platform in the World to launch a movie, especially when there is such an important topic to talk about. I hope being there help the debate to keep going and the conversation to move forward in the right direction. Into a direction of resolution.

Q: What is your next resolution? Your next movie?

Ehab: This project took 10 years of my life to be made, so for now, I will focus on pushing this film to be seen by as many people as possible. I hope I can keep making films of importance with such an important message and impact.