Roy Cohen remembers Aseel Aslih with ‘Far From Maine’

In 1997, 13-year-old Roy Cohen and 14-year-old Aseel Aslih became friends while attending Seeds for Peace, a summer camp in rural Maine meant to cultivate conversation between kids on opposite sides of international conflicts. Cohen was Israeli, and Aslih was Palestinian. 

During his time at Seeds of Peace and over the course of his friendship with Aslih, Cohen began to feel hopeful for their shared future, imaging, as he wrote in 2021, a “more just and less violent” Israel. Then, in 2000, Israeli police shot and killed Aslih during a protest outside Aslih’s hometown. 

Now, 26 years later, Cohen has made a film reckoning with his friend’s death and the country he calls home. “Far From Maine,” which plays at the Atlanta Film Festival on May 2, is structured as a letter to Aslih as Cohen confronts his own feelings about Israel. Ahead of the screening, I spoke with Cohen about the making of the film. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

I was kind of going through articles and essays that you’ve written, and I came across one you wrote for The Guardian, I think it was in 2021, about Aseel and your relationship with him. You mentioned that you were starting work on a documentary in that piece. That’s five years ago – when did this start to materialize for you as a documentary? 

Roy Cohen: I had Aseel’s story in me, and that friendship, for all my life, since 2000. In 2019, we moved back to Israel, my partner and I, because we wanted to start a family and a bunch of other reasons. I really knew that my story with Israel and Palestine is the story of my friendship with Aseel and the story of those Seeds of Peace friendships. 

That’s when I started doing some research and having conversations around making a documentary about that part of the world through that perspective. It took a while [to have] those conversations, and understanding where people are, and seeing how, for example, a lot of people like Aseel – Palestinian citizens of Israel – started feeling more and more fear, which I hadn’t really realized, about being in the film, because of what Israel was becoming. 

The making of this documentary really allowed me to see this region through different perspectives that before, I wasn’t just having open conversations about with my friends – my active friends, or my old friends. That’s when I realized, around the time when I was writing The Guardian essay, I was realizing the idea of making a film with that kind of cohort of people is not something I can do, because it’s a time of fear and violence. That’s when I realized, if I wanted to tell a story, I would have to be the subject. That’s what was really happening, during that time. It was after that, as it was published, that I got together with the main producer of this film, Serge Gordey, who made “5 Broken Cameras,” and then the other co-producers, really using my family life as the axis of the story. 

In that essay, you talk about a bunch of your Palestinian friends not really being interested in being a part of something like this. Obviously, there are people from Seeds of Peace in this documentary, and there’s also your family. I’m curious about the process of having those conversations about Israel and Palestine. You’ve talked about how people don’t seem to want to, for whatever reason. So I’m curious about the process of allowing people to open up, especially on camera. 

Cohen: A lot of Palestinians might have issues with trust, when it comes to an Israeli filmmaker, even if they’ve known them for a long time. There’s the fear of retribution if you live inside Israeli society, like a Palestinian citizen of Israel. I think that’s the key to answering your question, is having to do with trust. I became a writer – and film says this – but literally because of Aseel, in a way. Because I was trying to explore what it means to go back to Israel and live there. The first published pieces I had had to do with my friendship with Aseel, because it was the thing I had to dig into in order to realize what I wanted to say about life in the region. It was on an Israeli website … and then it got published in The Guardian, and then that strand of my career started. 

You could Google it – you could see who I am, in this time, what my opinions are. Even if you’ve known me for 25 years, it doesn’t mean anything –  you see it in the film. There are people from Seeds of Peace who [laughs] became pilots, and joined the Air Force. It was very palpable, who I am in this time. So, for people who are old friends, but maybe not active friends, when I started reaching out to them, it was like, okay – I know who Roy is, at this time. We had that connection. 

With my family, you know – my family knew what kind of film this was going to be. I mean, not everyone is happy with my family [laughs], but even when they were filmed, they knew what it was going to be. There was awkwardness, of course, around some of the filming and around some of the conversations. I think some of that, at least, is felt in the final cut when it comes to my sister or maybe other family members as well. But I was always open.

You’ve talked about, in your director’s statement, this movie as an ongoing letter, the things you’ve wanted to say to Aseel since his death. When did you actually start writing that down? Was that a continuous process? 

Cohen: [It was] really continuous. The first version of The Guardian article you read was published in Hebrew … as a letter to Aseel. The Guardian, being The Guardian, they don’t do letters [laughs]. But, that was the first version. I kept going back to that letter because it was so authentic and resonant. It was about telling Aseel what it was like to return. We were in Israel for maybe two years, when I wrote it down. I had been writing to Aseel ever since he died. I remember, Seeds of Peace brought us back to an alumni session in like, 2005 or 2006. I remember sitting in front of the lake and writing to Aseel. It’s been happening for years. But the text of the film really started a few months before The Guardian piece was published. I was trying to tell Aseel what it was like to live in Israeli society, to choose to return there, to the same place where he was killed, and then his murderers were never tried. That’s the first letter. 

There are scenes in this film from before Oct. 7, and the film reckons with how everything changed after Oct. 7, and things felt worse. But I’m curious, as a filmmaker, when you’re making this and something like that happens, how does that affect your process, and the challenges you have to go through? 

Cohen: First we thought that it was over, that the film was done. Before Oct. 7, we knew we weren’t going to take Israeli money. A lot of the foreign commissioners were like, “Where’s the hope?” [Laughs] You’re like, you know, maybe there’s hope in going back to those times and trying to hold onto a friendship in darkness. After Oct. 7, I mean – if anyone asked me where the [hope is], there’s no answer to that. 

It was confusing. What is the story that I’m telling? Everything really felt – the violence, and the brutality that I was seeing around me to no end, and this collective lack of doubt, I guess, in Israeli society. I was like, I don’t even know where I am. I don’t even know what society I live in. So how can I tell a story about living in a society to Aseel?

Then, after a month of talking to Serge, my producer, and kind of thinking, this is impossible, I realized, at the same time, this is the only thing that gives me any kind of meaning. It was the only thing that I wanted to channel my energy to. It made this choice of making this film more meaningful and more [like] survival. Because being a filmmaker is a privilege, inherently. But there was something about after Oct. 7 where I was like, “I don’t know how to live in this place, but I know how to make this film and how to ask all these questions.” 

Had I finished this film, miraculously, before Oct. 7, it would have been a very different film. But this one has a lot of questions. It’s very open ended. It leaves you with doubt. I think that’s the experience that I was going through. I really don’t know, and I still don’t know, how do you stay? How do you raise a kid in this society?

In your director’s statement, you say that this film is the start of the discovery of what meaningful action means to you. How has that evolved? What does that mean to you? 

Cohen: I’m working on developing more films that have to do with different experiences in Israel/Palestine – one with a Palestinian subject as a main character. I think this is a path that I chose, to tell the stories of people who live in this space and the complexity of their lives, how they make their lives meaningful. I think, in a time when Palestinian identity is being erased in Israel, and the right of Palestinians to live on the land – on their land – is being challenged by anyone and everyone in Israeli society – to me, reiterating that with the work that I do is meaningful. This film has opened doors for other films and other people who are trusting me, maybe, with their stories. But we’ll see how those are developed. 

There’s an upcoming election in Israel. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that the Israeli political system is completely concentrated on the Jewish parties – even the center-left, if that is a real thing, in Israel. Politically, just doing work internally in Israeli society of saying Palestinian parties are not just legitimate, but representatives of a public that has to be represented in our public and in our government. Should they choose to join a coalition, they should be given the opportunity. I do that as a citizen and as a writer, not as a politician. 

I read another article you wrote about the international boycott of working with Israeli-funded films. I’m curious about the feeling amongst creatives. Obviously, you’re just one person – but I know “The Sea” won at the Ophir Awards, and then the Israeli Minister of Culture threatened to defund the awards show. What is the feeling over there? 

Cohen: I think Israeli filmmakers don’t really know if they have alternatives to taking Israeli funding, and then they’re feeling – even if they’re politically against what the government is doing – they have a question mark around, alright, how do I make my film? And how long will it take me to make a film? Also, I pay taxes. Where does my implication in what the government is telling people to do start and end? I just take the money allotted to films, and I’m fighting against the government anyway, in protest. So there’s this kind of confusion and frustration that Israeli filmmakers have.

Personally, with this film, I knew early on that I didn’t want to take Israeli funding. And I think there are more and more filmmakers from Israel who are making that choice. You just don’t want to negotiate your film with commissioners who are being watched by the government. That’s, for me, what it was. It wasn’t so much the boycott movement – not that I’m against the boycott movement, by any means. I see their point, and it’s a non-violent way of resisting a very violent occupation. But for me, the choice of not taking that funding was about, I don’t want to negotiate this film with a commissioner that’s beholden to something that I don’t want to be beholden to. I think that more and more Israeli filmmakers are seeing that, and making those choices. 

But also, there are Israeli filmmakers who don’t really care about the conversation that’s going on. They think the boycott is unjust. I don’t see that, necessarily. I think [the boycott is] a very valid way of dealing with a political and violent situation. When it’s targeting me, obviously, I have my personal feelings about it, but I understand it. Some filmmakers out of Israel and Palestine – and they’re included in the article I wrote – are thinking about, where do we operate and are we a community now [laughs]? Because filmmakers aren’t necessarily the best community for each other, always. And there are different ways in which people are organized. There’s a film fund called Albi now, that supports more progressive filmmakers coming out of Israel/Palestine. There are all kinds of ways to think about it. For me, I seek my support from filmmaker friends. Some of them are Israeli and Palestinian, some of them are not. I think about every project individually. How do I get funded? How do I tell the story? Whose story am I trying to tell? Is it going to be possible to tell it in an honest way with that type of funding – yes or no – and build my projects around that.