EXT. Somewhere in Israel. Night. “Rami, you’re looking for Rami? Rami doesn’t exist,” a man says in Arabic. Somebody answers: “But let’s just say he does. Who is he?” This is what the project is all about: not really searching for a real character, but rather giving free rein to imagination. Only to imagine what? Since the focal point, Rami, is missing in Israel, another scene begins in Paris, before the editing table meant for that very footage. A new character suddenly appears: the “Interpretor” — brilliantly acted by Laurent Poitrenaux — who has come to reflect and make comments about the film, thus pushing into the background Judith Abensour and Thomas Bauer, the authors of the actual rushes, shot during a problematic and eventually fruitless meeting between French and Israeli students. As a mise en abyme of the documentary behind the scenes of fiction. And by shifting from one place to another, from the West Bank to Paris, from the editing room to a clearly staged set, from one language to another (Hebrew, English, Arabic, Italian), from images to their questioning, refractions abound. “Politics, it is all you ever talk about,” an Israeli student said. Actually, the point isn’t really to make a film about politics in Israel, but rather to wonder about the possibility to pass on, and turn a failure into shreds of an opera. (NF) Judith ABENSOUR
Nicolas Féodoroff