Before My Feet Touch the Ground

In July 2011, a young Israeli video editor named Daphni Leef decides to protest against sky-high Tel Aviv rent prices by leaving her apartment and pitching a tent in the city center. Within a few days a whole boulevard is full of tents, as a modest protest against housing policy grows into a national protest movement with Daphni as its figurehead. Tent camps spring up in cities throughout Israel, and mass rallies are organized all over. Daphni makes passionate speeches and regularly appears on TV as the face of the protest. At first combative and exuding an attractive idealism, she gradually becomes exhausted—particularly when she comes up against people who try to undermine her position with personal attacks and criticism of her background. In 2017, using news clips and her own video footage, Daphni looks back on this turbulent period when she was transformed from a somewhat naive young woman into a celebrated and controversial national icon.