An Israeli settler family crashes their car into the Virgin Mary statue outside a convent of Palestinian nuns in the West Bank. It’s the Sabbath, so the settlers can’t use their phone or drive. The nuns have taken a vow of silence. Both sides need each other’s help — and neither side is particularly thrilled about it.
Editorial Perspective
Basil Khalil’s Ave Maria finds comedy in the gap between religious observance and practical necessity — a space where even the most entrenched adversaries must negotiate. The film is scrupulously fair in its satire, finding absurdity in both the settlers’ rigid Sabbath rules and the nuns’ increasingly strained silence. The claustrophobic convent setting becomes a pressure cooker of polite hostility, and the film’s resolution — involving a creative theological loophole — is both satisfying and gently subversive.
Where to Watch
Available on select streaming platforms and through festival distribution networks.
Historical data reconstructed from archive.org snapshots of the Manhattan Short Film Festival website.
