The Divide

How far is the gulf between you and your enemy? Too wide to cross? Too far to bridge? Or too deep to heal?

All over the world, there are divides: victims and perpetrators; cops and robbers; neo-Nazis and queer communities; Hutus and Tutsis. Whether it is over class, race, sexuality, faith or power, the human race will always find a way to split and separate ourselves into different factions. Sometimes this is necessary for survival, and sometimes it is a matter of personal politics.

And yet, although the world is more divided than ever, there are exceptions. In what seems to be a miracle of forgiveness, unlikely friendships can form between the people who seem most susceptible to enmity.

In Across the Divide, Maurits Chabot takes us on a journalistic quest from Rwanda, along the border posts of Palestine and Israel, through an art gallery in Oslo and into the American prison system. He investigates how people can grow closer despite wars, ethnic tensions, geopolitical differences and violent actions, and seeks to answer whether there is a limit to our empathy, our understanding, and our ability to truly change.

In increasingly divisive times, we must ask ourselves: who is that person across the divide? What is their story? And how far is the distance between us?