The Wanted 18

Synopsis

It’s 1987, and the first Palestinian popular movement in the West Bank is rising. Residents want local alternatives to Israeli goods, including milk, which they’ve been buying from an Israeli company.

And so begins the strange story of the 18 cows.

The plot is hatched by pacifist intellectuals and professionals. Not your typical dairy farmers. These “lactivists” forge ahead anyway, buying 18 cows and smuggling them into the West Bank town of Beit Sahour.

But who knows anything about cows? These newly minted farmers have to learn the most basic skills—even how to milk their charges, which isn’t as easy as it looks.
Eventually, the cows come to the attention of Israeli authorities, and the chase is on—a cat-and-mouse (or soldier-and-cow) game writ large, as the cows shuttle from barn to barn, with their pursuers determined to find them. The cows became legendary and the 'intifada milk' (sometimes distributed under cover of darkness) becomes a part of daily life.

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Directors

Amer Shomali

Amer Shomali is a Palestinian practitioner using art, digital media and technology as tools to explore and interact with the sociopolitical scene in Palestine focusing on the creation and the use of the Palestinian revolution iconography.  He holds a master’s degree in animation from the Arts University Bournemouth in the United Kingdom and a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Birzeit University, Palestine. He was born in Kuwait in 1981, and is currently based in Ramallah, Palestine.

Paul Cowan

In his 25-year career as a filmmaker, Paul Cowan has never been one to shy away from controversy. He’s chronicled the rise and fall of renegade billionaire Robert Campeau, followed Dr. Henry Morgentaler on his controversial abortion crusade, dramatized Donald Marshall’s landmark battle against Nova Scotia’s justice system, and stirred up a storm of debate in the Canadian Senate with a hotly-contested docudrama about First World War flying ace Billy Bishop. His strength is creative documentaries that combine documentary
techniques with evocative images and recreations. Paul recently wrote and directed the feature documentary Paris 1919.