"Individual characters clash visually with their backgrounds, and one part of a sequence seems somehow to contradict another. But such disparities encourage the viewer to play an active, thinking role in apprehending the film as a whole."
Jonathan Rosenbaum, The Chicago Tribune, March 11, 1989

"The director holds the story at an analytical distance. Events are re-enacted in a sequence of ritual tableaux shot in the ruins of Wadi Salib, the old Arab neighbourhood of Haifa that the Palestinians abandoned after the 1948 war. The sense of ancient unsettled scores that have simmered for centuries is almost palpable in this beautiful but ravaged territory. In the most striking shots, the actors seem to blend into the architecture like the figures in Persian miniatures. These shots are pointedly contrasted with others photographed in the same vicinity, which make it look like a squalid contemporary junkyard. The juxtapositions suggest how overwhelmingly the region's history continues to haunt Israel's present."
Stephen Holden, The New York Times, May 19,1989