The Other Son

Director Lorraine Levy’s prize-winning film arrives as a graceful and touching drama of family love and self-acceptance. The Other Son charts the journey of Joseph (Jules Sitruk), a young man preparing to join the Israeli army for his required national service. A simple routine medical examination revels that he is not his parents’ biological son. Shocked at this revelation, the family revisit the hospital of Joseph’s birth to discovers he was inadvertently switched at birth with Yacine (Mehdi Dehbi), the son of a Palestinian family originating from the West Bank.

The advent of this news forces both young men to reassess everything they have come to believe about themselves, their national values, core beliefs and the cultural heritage they are a part of. The story unfolds as this revelation turns the lives of both families upside-down in a spiral of self-rediscovery and acceptance.This family drama presents many ethical questions woven through a simplistic “switched at birth” narrative, presenting a humane story arc as a metaphor for the ongoing Palestine/Israel conflict.

The two lead performance from young actors Sitruk and Dehbi deliver a compelling vessel for the audience to enter this tale of tolerance and acceptance. Whilst some may bulk at the overtly sentimental overtones of the central narrative, the underlying thematics prevalent within the greater context of the piece are gracefully executed and thought provoking, making this social drama one of the most compelling pieces of foreign language cinema to be released thus far this year.

The Other Son is now in  limited national release.