Jason Sherman, a Canadian Jew, searches for the tree that was planted in his name in Israel many years earlier. His travels take him to parks and forests throughout the country, where he learns a number of surprising facts about his tree: that it was likely a pine; that it was chosen because it grows fast; that it was completely wrong for the Israeli climate — and that it is sitting atop the remains of a Palestinian village that was captured and destroyed in 1967. Deeply disturbed by his findings, Jason returns home, determined to learn how it is he never knew these things — and what he should do now that he knows them.
Jason Sherman is one of Canada’s most influential and prolific playwrights, with a multi-award winning body of work that has been produced around the world, including the US, UK and China. Among his plays are Patience, It’s All True, The Retreat and Three in the Back, Two in the Head, which won the Governor General’s Award for Drama. Sherman has also written extensively for the screen, notably the docudramas Jonestown: Paradise Lost, and We Were Children, about Canada’s residential schools system, as well as numerous one-hour dramas for network and cable television, including two shows he executive- produced: Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures and The Listener. He also created and wrote a number of radio dramas for the CBC, including two long-running series: National Affairs and Afghanada. MY TREE is his first feature-length documentary as both writer and director.