East Meets West: Israel Through a Filmmaker’s Lens.

[00:00:07] Welcome to the Israeli Trailblazers. This podcast shares the stories of Israelis who are extraordinary, who are shaping the world. I'm your host Jennifer Weissmann. After years of living in Israel, I see it clearly. The people of Israel are resilient, innovative, and contributing to mankind. And yet most people in the world do not understand what Israel contributes. Israelis punch way above their weight given the size of the population, 0.2%.

[00:00:37] of the rural population is Jewish. My topic today about filmmaking, and Duki Dror. What is the Jewish idea in your mind? You have to be doubtful. You have to doubt everything that is told to you. And you have to check and investigate and understand. And even if it's true, you have to investigate and find it true. If it's true, okay. If it's not, go and try to find the true.

[00:01:05] Many of my protagonists, I see people that are dreamers. They have some kind of vision and they want to change the world. I think that we are here in a very interesting place because we are in between the Western civilization and the Eastern slash Muslim Arabic world. And we need to understand that that is true.

[00:01:35] And we have the capacity to understand both. Welcome. Thank you. Your films are sharing the chaos and the intricacies of Israeli relationships and other Middle Eastern relationships. You're focused on the struggle between the individual and the moral dilemma that humans have. And in particular, Israelis. I know your parents left Iraq. Yes.

[00:02:03] How did that struggle of humanity create Duki Dror today, the filmmaker? The main structure of drama is of dilemmas. I was educated on drama. I studied classical theater. You read the Greek plays, you see the struggle of dilemmas. You see the struggle of how to choose between two evils sometimes. Drama is a way to convey my ideas, my ideas, my thoughts, questions to the world.

[00:02:32] Of course, when you grow up as a son of refugees. My father was in Iraqi jail for five years, arrested at age 17 as part of the Zionist group.

[00:02:45] My mom came to Israel when she was 12. They both were deported or escaped from their country or as people that needs to create a new world, a new family, a new identity in a country that is still trying to understand what's its identity. My dad was released in 52. My mom arrived to Israel in 51. They met in Israel. They met in Israel, yes.

[00:03:15] And they're both from Iraq? Yes, from Baghdad. You grew up with stories of being an immigrant, starting in a new country. What was your childhood like? Well, we lived in Tel Aviv in a very Ashkenazi society, very European oriented. While at home, we had a very Arabic, I would say, culture of Jewish Iraqi, of course, but the language was Arabic sometimes. In your home?

[00:03:40] Yes. I had a feeling of living in two different worlds, at home and outside of home. I grew with learning how to be able to speak the two languages, the identity language, the language of the immigrants and the language of the new world. The new state that is becoming society that is growing now.

[00:03:59] And I felt alienated in the beginning because, of course, there's an inherited conflict between the Israeli identity and the Arab identity, which is the identity of the enemy. So I try to hide it as much as possible. From your friends and your Israelis? Friends, you know, I don't want to deal with this. This is something that I have to hide and look only to the West, to the new way of looking at how society should be, which is away from Arabic or Arab culture.

[00:04:29] I think it grew in me some kind of alienation. And I think that this feeling also took me away from Israel to the United States, which I lived there for almost nine years and went to school there. So you went to UCLA and you went to Columbia College in Chicago. You became a filmmaker. You have an overarching theme, but what's your personal mission with your films? You're not born as a filmmaker. And also you don't really become a filmmaker after you study film.

[00:04:58] It's a long process where you learn all the time. You learn and you change. And I think my mission was changing through time. Definitely in the beginning, it was okay. I'm probably not bad at it, but became my immediate identity that I can make films. And you cherish this and it's part of your ego. You mean mechanically you can make films? Yeah, you are able to make a film that people will see and say, oh, that's good. I didn't know that. You feel, okay, I can do something good, which is good.

[00:05:27] Contributing, always good. Yes. I can contribute to the world. I can do something that is meaningful. Cool. So after your ego is satisfied, then you start to embark on this journey to understand yourself, the world, and really to try to change it. And I always try to look at places where it could be hidden. Maybe other filmmakers would not really reach to them or were overlooked by history.

[00:05:53] For instance, I made a film about Eric Mendelssohn, who was a very well-known architect in the 30s in Germany, Jewish-German architect. He actually was one of the founders of modern architecture. But his trajectory really brought him to be neglected by history. So he's not known as Walter Gropius or Miss Van der Rohe. And I said, wow, this is a really interesting story.

[00:06:19] It feels like you like to go after the underdog, the one who doesn't have the light shining on it. Does that ring true for you? I think that with the story of Mendelssohn and many of my protagonists, I see people that are dreamers. They have some kind of a vision and they want to change the world. With Mendelssohn, it was very interesting. In 2003 or 2004, Tel Aviv was chosen by UNESCO to be a world-characterized white city of Tel Aviv.

[00:06:48] And I didn't know anything about that. And I lived in Tel Aviv. I was born in Tel Aviv. And all my life, I thought this is a really ugly city. I was going and starting to look after this was announced to understand what is really important, what is really so special about this. And I started to look beyond the plaster and I asked who are the architects who are really known to make this city as a world heritage. I got to the name of Eric Mendelssohn. And I said, oh, really?

[00:07:17] Where are the buildings that he built? And they said, there's none in Tel Aviv. But his spirit is there. So I said, wow, that's really interesting. Someone who has a spirit on a group of architects that created this white city center of Tel Aviv and had so much impact. But nobody really knows him aside of the architect community. So I thought that's interesting also.

[00:07:41] But beyond the fact that he is an immigrant, beyond the fact that he had to recreate himself in every place that he was going to in his life. He escaped Germany after the Nazis came into power. He came to Palestine, Israel, and then he moved to the U.S. So the story develops in a way that there is a storyline, there's a narrative.

[00:08:05] And also there's a dreamer who has this passion to create and to change the world. And he was neglected. All he was forgot. So that's... That's interesting. And how was that film received? It was great. It won many awards. What is it about Israel and specifically the Middle East that you want people to know? I think Israel is a very unique society of people who came from all around the world.

[00:08:31] And it has the biggest potential to create and to find and to see and to think about new things, new life, new ideas, how the future of humanity should be conceived. From one side is this. From the other side is also very sad, very tragic. There are so many conflicting powers here. You need to struggle and continue to see the light when you have all the conflict with the Palestinians,

[00:09:01] the conflict with the anti-Israeli, anti-Jewish sentiments in the region. This is only one side. The other side is that people are looking and seeing. This is something really interesting, what's going on here in Israel. Here in Israel. I came back after many years in the U.S. And it was really hard for me to come back here. Because? You get used to life in the U.S. It's simple compared to... Right.

[00:09:29] And you don't want to go back where you are always in a struggle. But I don't regret it. I think that this is a place where Jewish life is shaping in the most interesting way that it shapes in history. I think what we have here is something that we create all the time and we're changing and evolving. The idea of Judaism. Judaism is not as a religion. Judaism is an idea.

[00:09:57] Judaism is a philosophical idea. So for the person who's not Jewish living somewhere in Oregon or Sri Lanka or whatever, what is specifically the Jewish idea in your mind? You have to be doubtful. You have to doubt everything that is told to you. And you have to check and investigate and understand. And even if it's true, you have to investigate and find the truth. If it's true, okay. If it's not, go and try to find the truth. Be skeptical.

[00:10:24] Be skeptical and looking for the truth. And in a time which is very confusing, we are living in an extremely confusing time politically, not only here in Israel, but around the world and definitely in the U.S. now. And I think that we always have to look for the true meaning and the true facts. I think that the Israelis look for the truth. That's the potential, let's say.

[00:10:50] There are so many other parts of society here and look in a different way. You have the Haredin, you have the secular, everybody here. It's really a melting. Yeah, you have like a big pot. Either it's going to explode or it's going to be the best. I am optimistic because I think the ideas and the way that people are not confined to their own narratives, but also trying to seek above that, it is what will carry us to a better future.

[00:11:20] So you're optimistic. We're not talking about politics here in particular. We're not talking about being surrounded by Arab countries who may or may not seek our annihilation. Questionable for everybody. Just the internal society here, there seems to be an enormous amount of tension between the pro-BB, the anti-BB, the what to do. We have to understand that Israeli society is a young society.

[00:11:44] We're in the process of understanding who we are and how we want to envision our future. And of course, all the society processes are going on and it's brewing and it's a brewing society. But I think I do believe in the Israeli spirit. I do believe that there's something internally that you cannot change. We have a democratic soul. We're not inherited or want to be part of an authoritarian. Everybody wants a voice here. Everybody wants a voice.

[00:12:14] Of course, we know that two Jewish people, you had... Thousand opinions. Thousand opinions, yeah. The Jewish DNA is to be free and not to succumb to a dictatorship or to an authoritarian regime. Even though we have different parts in this society that are looking for this authoritarian regime, still I think the DNA is stronger than anything. That's amazing. I actually read that your original name in Iraq was Wanderer.

[00:12:44] The Wish. Correct. And when your dad came here, he changed it to Freedom. Yes. Drawer. Yeah, that was a very interesting little snapshot. I want to talk for a minute or two about obviously October 7th. And following that, you had a burning need as a filmmaker to capture this real time. Explain about your film Supernova. I think October 7th, that's only me. I think almost all Israelis and probably Jews around the world, it was a wake-up call. For me, it was a double wake-up call.

[00:13:12] First, this person who lives here that was attacked. This nationals could happen to my kids, could happen to my neighbor. But the second one is it was a wake-up call for me. I've been doing documentaries. And I did so many films. But this moment, I felt that the history is knocking on my door and I have to do something right away. We live now in a historical time. And I cannot really just focus on the past. The past and the present really... Converging. Converged.

[00:13:42] And I have to do something. And the first thing that I realized over eight, I saw anti-Israeli demonstrations in Europe. And I was shocked that there is a denial. There are pro-Hamas demonstrations after the mass murder of 1,200 people. Which seems obvious to any normal, rational human that that is a holocaust inside of Israel. Yes. What is there to debate? Sorry, I'm answering my own question. But I mean, it's shocking.

[00:14:12] And it wasn't just Europe. Spread across the U.S., right? It was just before Israel, I think, did one maneuver. There was one maneuver into Gaza. And already the voices of denial started. And then I felt, wow, I'm really violated. It's not only the violation of what happened. The 1,200 victims were murdered in cold blood by the Hamas and documented. I mean, you cannot really ignore that. You cannot really deny this. But then there's a denial.

[00:14:42] I said, okay, I have to do something. I called my partner in Germany. I'm working with a German production company. And I said, okay, let's make a film now and get it out as fast as possible. Because we are now in a war. There's a war not only in the field, but a war on the public consciousness, the public opinion. And we have to bring out the testimonials, the stories of what happened on October 7th.

[00:15:11] And I think the story of the Nova Festival is the strongest, most documented and most convincing testimony for this horrific massacre. So the Nova Festival was similar to Burning Man in America, right? Where several thousand people, Israelis mostly, converge in the desert and listen to music and talk about peace and dance and enjoy their life for one evening. And it happened to coincide with a massacre.

[00:15:40] And I was actually told that Hamas did not know about Nova, that that was like a bonus for them. Right. Was that your understanding? Yes. I think it was a decision made in the field. So Nova happens, the Hamas attacks. The next day on the 8th, you call your partner in Germany. And then what happens? I wrote a really fast proposal to the German television. The next day, we sent them the pitch deck. And the same day, we got green light for production of the film.

[00:16:08] And four days later, we started to film the testimonials with the survivors of the massacre. You got in a car and you went down south or wherever the survivors? October 9th, we drove to the south and we were going to meet one of the producers of the festival. There was a roadblock. The IDF didn't let us in. And he said, OK, wait for me. I will come in half an hour. I'll pick you up on a dirt road and we will go into the site.

[00:16:37] So you wanted to film at the Nova site? Yes. Although there were terrorists still running around there, there was a very dangerous zone at that time. Because Israel had not contained the area and cleared out the terrorists at that time. Yeah, that's correct. And so we were waiting for half an hour and then half an hour became one hour, two hours and three hours, four hours. It was completely dark. It was like... That must have been scary. Yeah, I mean, but you get used to it. You hear all the time just artillery and shots.

[00:17:07] I mean, it's so surreal, really. It's really surreal. You feel like you're in a Francis Ford Coppola film. You know, it's like Apocalypse Now. And... Wow. But it is... You see that this is reality. You were actually in a war zone at that moment. First of all, they had to clear the area, the Israeli side of the border. And there were still Hamas that were still in the area and they had to eliminate them. Hiding in bushes.

[00:17:35] Yeah, in bushes or in buildings and houses. They had to remove them. And then the producer came after four hours maybe. And he was actually going to look for his colleague who was missing. He attended Nova, the colleague? Yeah, he was part of the producers of Nova. I see. Okay. And then he came back when we met him. It's after he found his body. He was completely broken. That was the third day.

[00:18:05] And the fourth day, we already started to really quick research. Who do we find as victims? And of course, because Israel is so small, each one of us, we were three filmmakers who worked on it. And each one of us knew some people who knew some people. And really quickly, we interviewed about 15 survivors from the Nova Festival. And that was on the fourth, fifth, sixth day. We got raw testimonials. They didn't tell their stories yet before.

[00:18:33] So they did first time to the camera. And it was really extremely difficult to do. All of us were in a state of trauma. They were in a state of trauma. I felt that we have to get it. While it's raw and real. When it's raw, they don't have time to process it. Just say what you saw. Say what you felt. Say what you went through. And give us this moment. And the feedback from outside of Israel for Supernova has been what? It was extraordinary.

[00:19:02] We were able to distribute it to countless territories. I think everywhere in Europe, it was screened. And in South America. And TV in the U.S. Actually, we didn't. We're not able to distribute it in there. Except many festivals and special screenings that we did throughout the year after. It's still going on. You do this film. Is it moving the needle at all? Yeah, I think so. It wasn't very easy.

[00:19:31] The whole thing was to get this testimonial film out as fast as possible. And of course, it's a very gruesome, difficult film. And many of the TV broadcasters are looking for, okay, we need to do it with a balance. You know, it was already the time when it came out, the time that Israel went in with battalions into Gaza. And Gaza started to be seen all around the world.

[00:19:59] And so they had to struggle with the dilemma how to deal with this film. And we had difficulties, of course. The French television, actually, they pushed it. They didn't want to screen it. They had us air date and they pushed it. And they said that they had so many difficulties, legal difficulties that they want us to solve. And they knew that it's a very important film to show. I didn't want to push it from our side too much because they all felt this is Israeli.

[00:20:29] It's sort of a propaganda. It's not a propaganda. It's actually something that I felt for humanity is how really you violate humanity in the worst way possible. In the beginning, I wanted to fight back. But I said, okay, no. And my partners in Germany said, let us. They actually fought with the French to air it. And they actually were behind it 100%.

[00:20:58] Because of that, we were able to distribute it very well around the world. And I think they understood more than anyone else. Something like this is a red flag to humanity. That if something like this can happen and you don't fight it in the hardest way, then it will repeat everywhere. And it's not only a story for Israel. The relevance of Israel filmmaking, I mean, on the world, going forward. What's left to say?

[00:21:28] I think that we are here in a very interesting place. Because we are in between the Western civilization and the Eastern slash Muslim Arabic world. And we need to understand both. And we have the capacity to understand both. We can create an understanding on both sides. Because we are in between the two. The East and the West. Between the East and the West, yeah. Yeah.

[00:21:55] We have the ability to translate, to understand both sides, and to find a way to envision something that will not threaten each side. Like the tip of the spear for the rest of the world. Is that what you mean? If Israel can optimize the situation between Eastern philosophy, Western thought, and be successful, maybe this could be a way forward. I don't see the Arab world as one big monolithic thing.

[00:22:24] There's many variants in the Arab world. And they're very interesting. And I think we can find some new avenues to create these links between East and West. They are not in the way that it used to be. They are not the links that, I will say, the liberal Westerners are used to think about. How to deal with the Wild East. And we have to feel sorry for them.

[00:22:49] I look at these parts in the Arab world that are starting to, maybe to change in a small way. In the UAE, in Saudi Arabia. Right. And they start to understand that jihad is not a plan. We have to think differently about the world, about how do we envision the future. And it doesn't need to be with this world. We have the understanding, the knowledge, and we have a heritage we can work with.

[00:23:18] In a way, you have to look at this world in an eye to an eye. You don't look at the East in a condescending way. You look at it as something that is, I feel, it's part of me, but also with the West is part of me.

[00:23:36] And I feel that there's a way to bring society, bring humanity to a new level without to be feared from this side or from the other side. It doesn't have to be. It's not a zero-sum game. It's not a zero-sum game. So in your storytelling through film, what I'm hearing you say is that the future is about the rise of moderate Arab countries like Saudi and UAE and try to add more to the Abraham Accords.

[00:24:06] But to make the conversation about the Arab world less about jihadi, moving mankind forward and maybe capitalism. Absolutely. We have to look at also the Arab world as it used to be in the 11th century or 12th century, actually. They were continuing and luckily they did the translation of the Greek literature.

[00:24:32] I mean, they kept the Western society, the Western culture, the Western heritage. You see the richness in this society, not only the jihadi part. As long as we look at it in one single vision, then that's what we're going to get. Understand. Let's hope politically the Abraham Accord will include more and more countries. And I think that's a way of creating a different future. Okay. Let's hope your filmmaking continues.

[00:25:02] I really appreciate your time today. This is the Israeli Trailblazers show. I'm your host, Jennifer Weissman. If you found value in this, please share this on your social media with friends. And until next time.