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Filmmakers Richard Parry and Vaughan Smith had 15 years to polish the story of Blood Trail; the two British correspondents first met their subject, American war photographer Robert King, in Sarajevo in 1993. At that time King was a charming but naive art school graduate inspired by Robert Capa and determined to bag a Pulitzer. Parry, Smith, and the rest of the press corps thought he wouldn’t last, but King survived his learning curve and, working several continents, gradually earned respect for his tenacity, resourcefulness, and uncanny knack for being in the right war zone at the right time.
Another Toronto documentary entry that delved much deeper than the headlines was Leon Geller and Marcus Vetter’s The Heart of Jenin, a moving tale of a grieving Palestinian father who saved five lives. In 2005, 12-year-old Ahmed Khatib died in Jenin in the West Bank after an Israeli soldier mistook the boy’s realistic toy gun for a Kalashnikov assault rifle and opened fire. Ahmed’s father, Ismael, was persuaded by an ER physician to donate Ahmed’s vital organs to area residents in need of transplants, including a young girl from a Druze village, a Bedouin boy in the Negev, and a tiny Orthodox Jewish girl in Jerusalem. Over the years the recipients grow healthy and Ismael finds meaningful work running a children’s educational center in Jenin; the film culminates in his meetings with the children’s families. The Israeli-American Geller and his German codirector Vetter artfully blend archival shots from local news with contemporary footage to paint a fuller picture than the initial TV coverage could. The stated purpose of the film is to foster peace in a divided region, but the Khatibs’ story has also promoted progress in another corner of the world: business magnate Sultan Al Qassemi of the United Arab Emirates recently cited Ismael’s decision in an op-ed urging the UAE to adopt organ donor legislation.
