In a world fractured by war and mistrust, the voices of children can pierce through the noise with disarming simplicity. A new film, How Kids Roll, screened at the Vatican Film Library, captures this truth by telling the story of two boys—one Palestinian, one Israeli—who discover friendship and hope amid conflict.
“We have dreams, we have hopes. We are more than rebels. We are more than mere targets,” a young girl from Gaza declares in the film. Her words, according to Vatican News, are “both an affirmation of existence and a warning to adults.”
Directed by Loris Lai and nominated for the 2025 David di Donatello Award for Best Directorial Debut, the movie follows Mahmud, a Palestinian boy, and Alon, an Israeli boy, whose shared love of surfing allows them to see one another not as enemies but as companions on the same waves. “The two boys manage, through sport—something pure—to break down barriers and reduce the divisions they are otherwise forced to live with,” Lai explained.
The testimony of the young actors echoes the film’s deeper message. Mikhael Fridel, who plays Alon, admitted, “It was very difficult to pretend to hate him,” while his co-star Marwan Hamdam, who plays Mahmud, reflected, “The good moments, in this journey, is everything. I liked everything, I liked the journey, I liked the bad moments too,” according to Vatican News. Their bond, first forged on set, blossomed into a real friendship that endures beyond the screen.
The film’s release comes at a time when Gaza is “devastated—after nearly two years of war and almost completely razed by Israeli raids,” making its message even more urgent (Vatican News, Sept. 26, 2025). Paolo Ruffini, Prefect of the Dicastery for Communication, reminded those gathered for the screening: “In war, everyone suffers. Yes, perhaps in the end there is a winner, but what does it mean to be a winner? How can peace be won? How can one still hope for peace? How can one still love one another? By believing in a third possibility” (Vatican News, Sept. 26, 2025).
This “third possibility”—coexistence, not annihilation—is precisely the alternative the children themselves reveal. One line from the film resonates like a Gospel challenge: “The Israeli boy in the film even asks his father a very simple question: ‘When will all this end?’ The father replies: ‘Perhaps when they are no longer here, or when we are no longer here.’ At that moment, the boy wonders why it is not possible to imagine a third option: coexistence.”
For Catholics, this is a profoundly Christian vision. Christ Himself told His disciples, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God” (Mt 5:9). In the eyes of children—unburdened by centuries of conflict—we glimpse the hope of fraternity that lies at the heart of the Gospel.
Tarak Ben Ammar, one of the film’s producers, put it simply: “With what is happening in the Middle East, but also in Ukraine, it is children who teach adults. Hence the desire to send not a political message, but a message of peace.”
The question posed by the character Alon remains the question of our age: When will all this end? For Catholics, the answer begins in the conversion of hearts, in rediscovering, as Ruffini urged, “the pure gaze of children” and learning again to see one another not as enemies but as brothers and sisters in Christ.
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