CWC Global: Foragers

Foragers (2022) examines the fraught politics around the practice of foraging for wild edible plants with wry humor and a meditative pace.

Shot in the Golan Heights, the Galilee, and Jerusalem, it employs fiction, documentary, and archival footage to portray the impact of Israeli nature protection laws on these practices and customs.

These restrictions prohibit the collection of the artichoke-like ’akkoub and thyme-like za’atar and have resulted in fines and trials for hundreds caught collecting these native plants.

The Israeli government insists that these laws reflect scientific expertise and the government’s duty to protect the environment, while Palestinian foragers argue that these laws constitute an ecological veil for legislation that dispossesses them from their land.

Following the plants from the wild to the kitchen, from chases between the foragers and nature patrol to courtroom defenses, Foragers captures the joy and knowledge embodied in these traditions alongside their resilience to the prohibitive law.

By reframing the terms and constraints of preservation, the film raises questions around the politics of extinction: namely, who determines what is made extinct and what is able to live on in the wild.

For this special event presented in conjunction with the Climate Justice Working Group, our screening of Foragers will be followed by a recorded Zoom conversation between documentary co-writer Rabea Eghbariah (Harvard Law School) and moderator David Pellow (Environmental Studies, UCSB).

Pellow will then join Sherene Seikaly (History, UCSB) for a live discussion of the film.