Origin: Palestine | UK | Israel | Documentary | Director: Chloe Ruthven | 75 minutes

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The Do Gooders

by Chloe Ruthven, docu 75 min. 2013

A guerrilla style 'Thelma and Louise' road movie journeying deep into the murky world of International Aid.
Chloe (British) and Lubna (Palestinian) embark on a trip to explore the impact of Foreign Aid on the region. But what starts out as a simple quest, becomes increasingly complex as the personal and political become ever more entwined.

Chloe Ruthven’s grandparents were aid workers in Palestine. Growing up, she had avoided getting too involved in the subject, recalling how mention of the country made all the adults in her life angry. In her forties, after revisiting her grandmother’s book on the subject, she starts to research a documentary on the effects of foreign aid in the area and is shocked at the continued reliance on it there. Along the way she meets Lubna, a Palestinian woman who acts as her driver and fixer, and who is fiercely critical of Western aid efforts in her country. What begins as a quest to better understand her family history turns into a deeply emotional account of two women trying to understand one another. Ruthven’s determination to focus her film on deeply subjective analysis results in a unique joining of the acutely personal and complexly political.

Production: Roast Beef TV

trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvRlOTS7JD8

Director's interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF7puBt_ALU

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View trailer