Spielberg says his new film 'Munich' is a 'prayer for peace'

Spielberg says his new film 'Munich' is a 'prayer for peace'

By Reuters

Director Steven Spielberg said his new film "Munich," the story of Israel's revenge for the killing of its athletes by Palestinian guerrillas at the 1972 Olympics, is "a prayer for peace," Time magazine reported on Sunday.

Leaders of Jewish and Muslim groups as well as diplomats and foreign policy experts will preview the film before its December 23 U.S. opening but Spielberg has shied away from the media hype and costly promotional campaigns that typically precede a big-studio movie.

The magazine said its interview was the only one the Oscar-winning director planned to do before the release of the film, which focuses on Israel's response after a Palestinian group took members of its Olympic team hostage at the Munich Games. Eleven Israeli athletes, five kidnappers and one German policeman were killed.
"Somewhere inside all this intransigence there has to be a prayer for peace," Spielberg told Time, "because the biggest enemy is not the Palestinians or the Israelis. The biggest enemy in the region is intransigence."

The director also discussed another film project he is initiating in February, in which he is buying 250 video cameras and players and giving them to Israeli and Palestinian children so that they can make movies about their own lives.

"Not dramas," Spielberg said, "just little documentaries about who they are and what they believe in, who their parents are, where they go to school, what they had to eat, what movies they watch, what CDs they listen to."

Spielberg said the children will then exchange the videos with one another.

"That's the kind of thing that can be effective, I think, in simply making people understand that there aren't as many differences that divide Israelis and Palestinians. Not as human beings anyway," he said.

The director told Time he's very proud of the fact that "Munich" doesn't demonize either the Israeli or Palestinian side.

"We don't demonize our targets," Spielberg said. "They're individuals. They have families."

The movie stars Eric Bana, Daniel Craig and and Oscar winner Geoffrey Rush.