17/05/2024 - CANNES 2024: Yolande Zauberman continues to reveal the hidden, nocturnal side of Israeli society with an intimacy of exceptional intensity

“I was told that a boy had walked from Gaza to Tel Aviv. I filmed three trans women. You're looking for one of them, I was told years later.” After the hard-hitting Would You Have Sex with an Arab? [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and M [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], French documentary filmmaker Yolande Zauberman has decided to complete her trilogy of Israeli nightlife by embarking almost blindly on an astonishing and ultra-personal investigation, the heart of which is Hatnufa Street in Tel Aviv. An investigation that is totally off the beaten track, transmuting into a formidable birth of the voice of trans women, countering prejudice against them as the filmmaker searches for The Belle from Gaza [+see also:
interview: Yolande Zauberman
film profile], which gives its name to the film shown in a special screening at the 77th Cannes Film Festival.

“It's wonderful to be a full-time woman”, “here I can be myself, elsewhere trans people are killed and thrown off rooftops”, “I'll go to the beach in a bikini to pick up men”, “everyone here is a powerful being who can stand up to the street. You're facing the dark side of humanity. When I became a woman, I saw how men mistreat women.” It is in this very paradoxical world that, with a camera in one hand and a photo of the woman she is looking for in the other, the director interviews the girls working as prostitutes in an incessant ballet of cars. It's a world of immense pride in finally being oneself (“I'm not to blame, I was born this way”), but often filled with very bad memories (harassment at school with sex in exchange for peace and quiet in “a kind of silent rape”, Muslim families prepared to murder in the name of traditionalist honour, etc.). But while not all of them have been as lucky as Talleen, the first Arab to be crowned Miss Trans Israel in 2016, they do share one essential fierce desire: the desire for freedom and happiness that they express in sequences of confidences of remarkable intimacy and intensity captured by Yolande Zauberman, who chats with them as they gradually retrace the trail that may lead them to The Belle from Gaza (in danger of deportation if she unmasks herself).

Making marvellous use of music and her innate talent for empathy, the director plays with the shadows to bring out a composite work (sometimes a little chaotic like the night) blazing with light in the darkness. A beautiful tribute to women who mirror Israel's cultural and religious mosaic (“we trans women are God's soldiers to prove that God made me for a reason") that turns all the viewers' preconceived notions on their head and delivers a precious shred of humanity.

The Belle from Gaza was produced by Unité and Phobics, co-produced by Arte France Cinéma and sold by Pyramide International.

(Translated from French by Margaux Comte)