Mini documentary focuses on religious unity

Religion should unite, not divide.

That simple, straightforward message is at the core of a short film by Peace Media’s Elana Sztokman, an American Israeli social justice and feminist activist, anthropologist, journalist, book author, community organizer, podcast host and, most recently, filmmaker. Her mini documentary, The Faith That Draws Near, was just named a winner of the Global Peacebuilder Award in the 2026 Religious Freedom Film Competition.

The Religious Freedom Film Competition is sponsored by Empower Women Media, a multi-faith communications company focused on human rights and religious freedom. Its annual film competition recognizes female creators for works that explore religious expression, interfaith co-existence and women’s empowerment.

The Faith That Draws Near is just five minutes in length, but those few minutes is all that Sztokman needed to demonstrate what she sees as the true power and potential of religious observance in Israel/Palestine.

“In the media coverage of Israel/Palestine, we are often exposed to religion as a conduit of violence, hatred, and racism,” she says. “But that obscures a reality that many people live with, which is that their religious practice is a source of compassion and a deep understanding of our shared humanity. The media rarely tells this story, and that’s a huge loss for all of us.”

Sztokman’s film features three religiously observant women: Dr. Fadwa Kirrish who is Muslim, Peta Pelach who is Jewish, and Hyam Tannous who is Christian. All three make their homes in Israel/Palestine and all three are deeply committed to their individual faith traditions and beliefs. They regularly attend mosque, synagogue, or church, and incorporate their respective rituals and religious tenets into their daily interactions and activities.

In spite of the ways in which their separate faiths and customs are often characterized, Kirrish, Pelach and Tannous—who are close friends with one another—have discovered more commonalities in their distinct belief systems than contradictions. Devoutness for them is about goodness, not its opposite, and that is what Sztokman, who also serves as the film’s narrator, hopes audiences will see and understand by spending just a few moments in the women’s company.

“The film aims to show the real faces of religious women for whom religion is a tool to recognize the humanity in the other and to find alternatives to violence,” she explains. It is meant to provide hope based on real lives of real women of faith from different religions.”

Sztokman achieves that aim by simply having her camera follow Kirrish, Pelach and Tannous around as they casually stroll hand in hand near their homes and sit and chat with one another about prayer and piety.

“If you are Jewish or Christian or Muslim you should live by the book,” says Tannous, who is Catholic and Palestinian. “You should live by the prophet, by what the Lord told you to do.”

If He told you to love each other and love even your enemy, she continues, that is what you should do.

“If you love your neighbour so what,” she adds. But if you love your enemy this is a value.”

Clearly, Tannous, Pelach and Kirrish have never viewed one another as enemies, but they are well aware that in the troubled land in which they live religious differences serve, among many others, as a barrier to peaceful co-existence.

“The first thing we need to do is to get to know each other and each other’s faiths,” Pelach asserts.”

Pelach is a member of Women Wage Peace (WWP), the multi-faith grassroots movement that has spent the dozen years since its founding promoting a non-violent, mutually accepted solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the full participation of women. WWP pursues that goal in myriad ways, including by meeting with Israeli parliamentarians and international diplomats and dignitaries; widely circulating its Mother’s Call petition, and organizing workshops, peace marches, protests, panel discussions and speaker and film series focused on peace activism and human rights.

Following the success of its first ever public program last spring, the multi-faith Winnipeg affiliate of Women Wage Peace, one of several around the world, is considering hosting such a film series. The Faith That Draws Near, of course, could be one of the films it presents, perhaps paired with Daughters of Abraham, the mini documentary that was named the winner of the Empower Women Media’s Global Award for Religious Freedom back in 2024. Like The Faith That Draws Near, that film explores the friendship between women from disparate backgrounds, one a Palestinian-American woman and the other an Israeli-American woman who discover one another on-line in the wake of Oct. 7 and the Gaza war.

“Our goals are to support the work of Women Wage Peace in Israel by raising awareness of the group and other peace groups and to create dialogue with Palestinian and Muslim women,” says Chana Thau, co-founder of the local WWP group.

Echoing the courageous and compassionate Muslim, Christian and Jewish women portrayed in the brief, award-winning films, she adds, “To achieve peace, we must choose to see the shared humanity of the other.”

swchisvin@gmail.com

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