Returning to the Croisette, where in 1989 she presented the documentary Caste Criminelle and in 1993 her first feature film (Me Ivan, You Abraham), French filmmaker Yolande Zauberman talks to us about her new documentary,  The Belle from Gaza [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Yolande Zauberman
scheda film], which will be unveiled in a special screening at the 77th Cannes Film Festival.

Cineuropa : After Would You Have Sex with an Arab? [+leggi anche:
trailer
scheda film] (Venice Orizzonti 2011) and M [+leggi anche:
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trailer
scheda film] (Special Jury Prize at Locarno 2018 and César for Best Documentary 2020), The Belle from Gaza is the 3rd part of a trilogy set in the Israeli night. How did the project come about?
Yolande Zauberman : In M (editor's note: about children raped in Hasidic circles), as Menachem was very attracted to trans women, I organised a scene in which he discussed his sexuality with Talleen Abu Hanna, who was Miss Trans Israel. This scene turned out to be very important for the film because it not only brought dreams to life, but also the idea that you could rebuild yourself from a wound and reinvent yourself. At another point during the shoot, while I was filming Menachem, we saw a very beautiful trans woman drive by, but by the time Menahem got out of the car, she had fled. Menachem said to me "It's terrible, my parents don't like me, my children don't like me, and even trans women don't like me.” So I went to Hatnufa Street in Tel Aviv to film a young trans woman running away like that, from behind. Then I filmed three young Arab women with whom my partner, who speaks Arabic, chatted. On the way back to Paris, he said to me: “You know, one of them came on foot from Gaza.” This idea never left me and I decided to look for this woman.

These women have lived very difficult lives, but you manage to capture their light. Is your film a kind of therapy for them?
I never wanted to film people as victims. In the old days, trans women were goddesses and I wanted to give them back that place. I wanted all the light they carried to be there. In fact, if I film at night, it's because I want to find the light in the night and because at night you take your time. I think documentary nights are the most beautiful in cinema because you have to take the risk of the night and the risk of being on the edge of disappearance and appearance. For these women, I think it's been a very important journey: one became a nun and started wearing the hijab while the film was being made, another left the streets to become a make-up artist and hairdresser, and Nadine, who quit the streets and drugs, went back to live with her family. These girls have great potential, but there's very little space for trans women. And that's why Talleen's story is fantastic, because she has found everything again by becoming a well-known figure in Israel and a kind of icon in the Arab world. This means that something is possible, that there is hope. The Middle East is a place where you never know where you're going to end up when you knock on a door: it can be full of humanity or full of inhumanity.

What about the complexity of Israeli society, with all its layers, religions, etc.?
That's the bottom line. I make mirror films, films that look at us, films that teach us things about ourselves, about freedom, about what it is to become oneself, about the extent to which these difficult paths have given these women an extraordinary view of life, of the world, of what surrounds them.

Your film comes at a time when Gaza is the centre of attention.
That has nothing to do with it, but it does have something to do with it.