“La belle de Gaza”: A political film because it allows for intimacy, not because it has slogans at the ready.
Photo: Pyramide Films
“A man fled on foot from Gaza to Tel Aviv to become a woman.” That’s what the French director Yolande Zauberman heard when she filmed some trans women on Hatnufa Street in Tel Aviv for her documentary “M” (2018). wanted to do sex work there. Zauberman decided to find this woman, whom she called “the beautiful one from Gaza,” and make a documentary about her. This is how the idea for the film “La belle de Gaza” came about.
The work celebrated its premiere in Cannes last week. In the film, Zauberman, who not only directed the film but also did the camera, asks various trans women about the woman from Gaza. But nobody seems to know her. The title character remains obscured until the end of the film. However, the search for her makes the other trans women visible. Many of them are Arab, some are even devout Muslims. They talk about their fears and dreams. About the danger they face of being found, beaten or even killed by their own family members or acquaintances.
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After the war began in October 2023, the director actually no longer wanted to show the film. “I thought what was happening was too big that we shouldn’t show it,” says Zauberman in an interview with “nd”. In the editing room, she showed the film to just a few friends and filmmakers. She wanted to see their reactions, what they understood or didn’t understand. “Even though some of them were very radical, they said that I should show the film,” says Zauberman. Then she made a text presentation. »There were people from all over the world. At the end of the film everyone had tears in their eyes. We all cried together. So I decided to show the film.«
“La belle de Gaza” ultimately premiered in the “Special Screenings” section of the Cannes Film Festival, which is currently underway. The main filming location is the said Hatnufa Street in Tel Aviv. Fragments from the lives of some Arab and Israeli trans women are shown without conveying any direct political messages. But can a film with “Gaza” in the title be apolitical? “Of course it is a political film, but more through its intimacy and not through slogans and debates,” the director told “nd”. »These women show us how we should look differently. What they are experiencing, both in body and in life, is too hard. And if you have the courage to go to the end of the process, you look at life from a different perspective.«
“La belle de Gaza” also features the Arab-Israeli trans woman and actress Talleen Abu Hanna, with whom Zauberman had already worked in her previous project “M”. “It’s a right decision to show the film because it talks about peace,” said Abu Hanna to “nd” in Cannes. »We live in a political moment; everything we do is political. But for me the film was more of an opportunity to talk about our lives, our reality. Because Yolande shows the truth, the different faces of transsexuality,” said the model, who was named Miss Trans Israel in 2016.
After the documentaries “Would you have sex with an Arab?” (2011) and “M”, “Le belle de Gaza” is the third part of a trilogy that Yolande Zauberman produced in Israeli filmed at night. She was told to change the title of the film because it was too dangerous, Zauberman told “nd”. »Even with my other film “Would You Have Sex with an Arab?”, which many people liked, they said I should change the title. But that was the question I asked people in the documentary, it was a liberating question. I don’t just make my films for a moment, I want them to be relevant in ten or 20 years.”
As a child, Yolande Zauberman only had one dream: to feel other people’s feelings, as she tells »nd«. How did she manage to gain the trust of these trans women so that many of them showed their faces in the film and told their stories? »I think that’s the great magic, because I don’t talk so much about what I’m up to. I know what I’m looking for, but I don’t know the answers. I offer more of an experience. It is also an experience for me. Together we create a space that is not quite mine, but not quite theirs either: that is the film. And as much as possible comes from within.«
“La belle de Gaza”: France 2024, directed by Yolande Zauberman, 76 minutes. Start date still unknown.
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