Aux frontières

In this road movie, filmmaker Danielle Arbid tries to conjure up an image of the country that is called Israel or Palestine. She literally makes an outflanking movement: for some weeks, she follows the border and looks at the other side from South Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, without ever crossing the boundary. In South Lebanon, she visits one of the Hezbollah strongholds and talks with the person responsible for the logo and other visual expressions of this movement. In these circles, the name Israel is rarely mentioned, ‘There isn’t anything like the map of Israel’, they say. The filmmaker also speaks with the occupants of a refugee camp that has existed since 1948, but where the people are still hoping for an eventual return to their native land. In the north of Jordan, a rather eccentric man lives, who grows vegetables and fruit in the valley at the foot of the Golan Heights, along the river that constitutes the border there, a heavenly place where a deceptive quiet reigns. Because in Lebanon, in Syria and along the Jordanian border, everywhere, the Israeli soldiers, the barricades and the traces of war and violence are visible. For many of those living at this side of the border, the country on the other side is the promised land, the place they fantasise about and keep longing for. For others, the hatred of those who deny them the possibility to live in freedom and to travel predominates.