29/06/2009

"A small episode in an ocean of the tragedy that is the Middle East. The Israeli-Palestinian War is the least forgotten war in the world. There are more cameras there than anywhere else on the planet, yet people don’t understand it, because it’s not told well by the media," says Simone Bitton, a Moroccan-born filmmaker who grew up in Israel.

Winner of the Pesaro Nuovo Cinema Prize in 2004 for The Wall, Bitton returned to this year’s Pesaro Film Festival, in the Bande à Part section, with Rachel [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which previously screened at the Berlinale Forum.

Produced by Ciné-Sud Promotions, Arte France Cinéma, Novak Production and RTBF, the film examines the death of Rachel Corrie, an American activist who died March 16, 2003, at just 23 years old, crushed by an Israeli army bulldozer while trying to defend a Palestinian house from being demolished.

The case was closed rather quickly by the US government, but for Bitton it became fertile ground for an in-depth investigation made up of interviews – with her fellow activists, military leaders and ordinary soldiers, as well as the Palestinian families that witnessed the event – and precious documentation, even a video shot that afternoon by the Israeli army.

"It took me three years to make Rachel and I needed to do a lot of research and documentation,” says the director. “But I had to do it, even though with age one becomes less certain of the need to rebel when one isn’t sure of winning". Like Rachel Corrie, who stood up against soldiers her own age, but who were fated to a different role.

Sold internationally by Umedia, Rachel will be distributed in France in October by Les Films du Paradoxe.