Film that Angered Israeli Parliament Debuts in Berlin

‘ANGER AND FRUSTRATION ON BOTH SIDES’

The Israeli-made film “Lipstikka” had its world premiere in Berlin this week. Last year the movie caused a storm of debate in its homeland due to the fact that it allegedly compared the occupation of Palestinian territories to the Holocaust. In an interview, director Jonathan Sagall and cast members discuss the controversy and red lines in the arts in the Middle East.

“It is not the film’s story itself that has made it so controversial back in Israel, but rather the process in which public funding had been sought to create the film. In January 2010, prominent Israeli journalist Yair Lapid, of the Tel Aviv-based daily Yedioth Ahronoth, strongly criticised the fact that an “anti-Israel” film had been funded by the government.
Yosef (Joseph) “Tommy” Lapid wrote that, in 2006, Sagall “had requested support for a film regarding his mother’s experiences at a concentration camp. … Three years later, Sagall came back to the fund with a new propsal: He would take his mother’s story and shift it to Ramallah. Instead of two girls at a concentration camp, the film would recount the stories of two young Palestinian females under Israeli occupation.”
According to Lapid, a brochure sent by Segal to potential distributors and investors ahead of the film’s release noted that “great persuasion work was needed in order to convince the Israel Film Fund to approve a story arguing that the occupation is worse than what Israel ever admitted to, and can be compared to the Holocaust.” Lapid, who also contacted the director of the Israel Film Fund to complain about the film’s funding, wrote that the incident was “a small yet very typical story regarding the way Israel shoots itself in the foot.”