The documentary “Foragers” is the answer to an unmistakable filmmaker’s question: how to depict without epigonism what was already shown so many times before? Jumana Manna’s trick is as original as it is efficient: she picks out a plant – the za’atar – disputed by Palestinian and Israeli citizens, and turns it into an exquisite metonymy. The aromatic plant comes to function as a substitute for a geopolitical canvas, skipping over the exposition of the West Bank conflict with quite a lot of humour. “Foragers” works admirably as an investigative film (regarding an abusive Israeli law which deprives the Palestinian people of a symbolic plant) and as a thriller (the sequences where the “robbers” and the “cops” chase each other through fields of weeds – a scene worthy of burlesque films, where the stake happens to be precisely national identity). An important lesson, which reminds us that in cinema it is often matters of nuance that make the difference: angle, tone, playing with registers. Let us bet on the gaze that devised ”Foragers.” (Victor Morozov)