Miss Entebbe

Noa is a twelve year old girl on the cusp of womanhood, dealing with issues and emotions she only half understands. Sensing the tension in her parents’ marriage, she reacts in a typically teenage manner: she distances herself from her mother and turns to her neighbor, the beautiful Elise, for friendship and advice. But then Elise leaves for what was supposed to be a short business trip, and is taken hostage on the fateful flight hijacked to Uganda’s Entebbe Airport.
Facing this crisis, Noa and her neighborhood friends, including Elise’s son, band together for comfort. They huddle in front of the television set, watching the “talking heads” confer, the strain on each one captured in stark black and white. Then they hike across the hills of Jerusalem, with its mesmerizing rows of pale stone apartment complexes punctuated by deep green trees and rock-strewn gullies. They get themselves into trouble, but the ordinary rules of daily life have been suspended; even when one of the fathers realizes that his Uzi is missing, the parents are too preoccupied to pay sufficient attention.