Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai’s latest documentary, WEST OF THE JORDAN RIVER, was a selection of the 2017 Cannes Film Fest and the closing night of the New York Jewish Film Fest, presented by The Film Society of Lincoln Center and The Jewish Museum.
Gitai returns to the occupied territories for the first time since his 1982 documentary Field Diary with this portrait of the citizens, Israelis and Palestinians, who are trying to overcome the consequences of occupation.
The film, which is realistic but also optimistic, shows the human ties woven by the military, human rights activists, journalists, mourning mothers, and even Jewish settlers.
Faced with the failure of politics to solve the occupation issue, these men and women rise and act in the name of their civic consciousness. Their human energy serves as a proposal for long-overdue change, and a testament to the crucial values of mutual tolerance and co-existence.
About Amos Gitai
Amos Gitai has worked in documentary and fiction since the late 1970s. His films have been shown at Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Locarno, Telluride, and The New York Film Festival. He has been the subject of retrospectives at MOMA, the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the British Film Institute, the Cinématheque Française, the Pompidou Center, and the Chicago Institute of Contemporary Art.
His films include the House trilogy, which describes the attachment of Palestinians to their land in West Jerusalem, and was banned by Israeli TV; the Wadi trilogy, Devarim, Yom Yom, Kadosh, Kippur, Free Zone, Disengagement, and One Day You’ll Understand.
Gitai divides his time between Paris and Haifa.
