A collaboration with good-friend-and-someone-I'm-always-in-dialogue-with, Johnny Schaller, this film is the product of an exchange semester at Al-Quds university in Ramallah, Palestine in the spring of 2022. It premiered in the New Vision Competition at CPH:Docs in 2024 - and had become a historical footnote by that time.

During our time at Al-Quds, we travelled widely through the West Bank and Israel. In a place so layered and conflict ridden, we spent much time observing and listening. With each new experience we had, the politics in the occupied West Bank appeared more multilayered. And yet - the situation of occupation per se increasingly felt unbearably unjust.

Moshe Dayan, a former Israeli minister of defence has been quoted as saying that he would “rather train a Palestinian as a fighter pilot than as a tour guide.” In a cynical way, this recognises and emphasises the great political importance of a global general public's narrative around any conflict-  and the Isreali-Palestinian one in particular.

To film a story about the absurdities of Western religious tourism in Bethlehem meant a chance for us to reflect on our presence in Palestine and Israel, and about the political role of any traveller more broadly. SILENT NIGHT is a film about being privileged and far from home - and about the many ways in which the West looks away.