Prize of the Ecumenical Jury, Kyiv 2007

“The Band’s Visit” unfolds its little but universal story with a lot of warmth and fine humour. It tells about different kinds of friendship and loneliness which people of different religions and political systems feel about the same way, and it tells about the universal call to care for other people.

For the Alexandrian Ceremonial Orchestra, a band from Egypt on a visit to Israel, ending up by mistake in a small village in the desert is a kind of catastrophe. But for them and the Israeli inhabitants – and, first of all, for the viewers of the film -, the day and the night they spend there becomes a strong, liberating and entertaining experience.