" I don't politicize my films, they politicize me "

Films: Journal de campagne (1982) ; À l'Ouest du Jourdain (2017). Documentaries

" We had a kind of intuition, five years before the Intifada, that what the Israelis called at the time an "enlightened occupation ", a kind of occupation without occupation but with a visible military presence, would be synonymous with great tension. For Diary of the Campaign, we began to follow a methodical path, using sequence shots to film various episodes. Each sequence shot becomes a chapter in the shooting diary. At the time, people wanted to prevent the reality of the occupation from being filmed, because it didn't exist " officially ". So, whatever the cost, the images had to be suppressed. The occupation is an abstract idea, and the work that interests every filmmaker, in my opinion, is : how do you describe an abstraction ? Journal de campagne was made in this way, by accumulating a series of filmed situations. In the tacit contract between myself and the viewer, I had to inscribe this obsession or insistence on filming at all costs.

Campaign Diary (1982)

Diary of the Field is a diary shot in the occupied territories before and during the invasion of Lebanon in 1982. In it, Amos Gitaï methodically surveys the same triangle of land, filming day by day what he sees: the discomfort of Israeli soldiers in front of the camera, their refusal to be filmed, the settlers' state of mind, the multiple forms of Palestinian resentment.

West of the Jordan (2017)

In West of the Jordan, Amos Gitai returns to the occupied territories for the first time since Field Diary. The film describes the efforts of Israeli and Palestinian citizens to overcome the consequences of occupation. Human bonds are forged between human rights activists, journalists, soldiers, grieving mothers and even settlers. Faced with the absence of political solutions to the question of occupation, these men and women stand up to act in the name of their civic conscience.