Filmmakers seek Mideast peace in dieting and football

By Claudia Parsons

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Dieting may not have much to do with politics, but for one U.S.-Israeli filmmaker it was a way to bring together Jewish and Arab women who normally would never meet to talk about peace -- or losing weight.

The result is "Slim Peace," a documentary showing at New York's Tribeca Film Festival, which follows a group of women whose initial mistrust of each other is at least partly tempered by what they find in common at a weight-loss group.

"Sons of Sakhnin United," another documentary at the festival, is a male version of a similar story -- making peace, or not, through football. It follows the fortunes of Bnei Sakhnin, the first Arab team to become champions of Israel.

There are moments of striking candour in both films.

"Until these meetings I thought that everybody who wore a hijab (headscarf) ... wanted to kill me," a Jewish settler in the weight-loss group says in "Slim Peace."

In the other film, fans of the team based in the Arab-Israeli town of Sakhnin chant "War, war, war" at a game against a Jewish team. Outside the stadium, Jewish fans taunt their rivals by calling the Prophet Mohammad a homosexual.

"Those scenes are extremely challenging for Jew and Arab alike," producer Roger Bennett said, adding that football was an outlet for "sentiments not otherwise expressed so explicitly."

"Football is always political, whether it's West Germany playing East Germany in the World Cup in 1974 ... or England playing pretty well anybody since World War Two," he said.