FRANCE: Film about Egyptian musical police band who get lost in Israel premieres at Cannes

Record ID: 561826

  • Title: FRANCE: Film about Egyptian musical police band who get lost in Israel premieres at Cannes
  • Date: 30th May 2007
  • Summary: CANNES, FRANCE (RECENT - MAY 20, 2007) (REUTERS) TRAFFIC AND PEDESTRIANS IN SQUARE OUTSIDE CANNES FILM FESTIVAL PALACE POLICEMAN DIRECTING TRAFFIC IN SQUARE
  • Embargoed: 14th June 2007 13:00
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  • Location: France
  • Country: France
  • Reuters ID: LVAD8HYQL6L6W3WSDH4S3D7HEFFS
  • Story Text: Film about Egyptian musical police band who get lost in Israel premieres at Cannes.

    Israeli director Eran Kolirin received a 15 minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival at the screening of his first feature film, "The Band's Visit," performed in Hebrew, Arabic and English.
    The film, which features in the festival's Un Certain Regard selection, tells the story of an Egyptian police band which arrives in Israel to perform at the opening of an Arab cultural centre in a coastal Israeli city. But they lose their way after their ride from the airport fails to arrive because of a bureaucratic mistake. They take the wrong bus and end up in a remote Israeli desert town, where they are forced to spend the night.
    The film does not overtly mention the Arab-Israeli conflict, but the very fact the director centres the film on a meeting between Egyptians and Israelis is a political choice. Yet Kolirin, who grew up in the 1980s watching Egyptian movies shown on public Israeli TV every Friday afternoon, focuses his film on fostering cultural ties between Arabs and Jews rather than political solutions.
    "I don't do a subject film, I don't do an issue film, I am not a politician. At the end of the day I do have a political conscience and the film is political," Kolirin told Reuters Television in an interview in Cannes.
    "But I think it doesn't address the issue directly, first of all, and by doing so I hope it addresses some other political subject which are never dealt with. Like the neglect of Arab culture in Israel, the fact that everyone in the area wants to forget themselves into the Western world, we want to forget ourselves, the Palestinians want to forget -- we all want to forget, just forget we are there."
    Kolirin champions Middle Eastern Arab culture throughout the film, which is filled with references to classical Arab singers and Arab films. More Arabic is spoken in the film than Hebrew. A character refers to "big love in big Arabic words."
    Palestinian-Israeli actor Saleh Bakri, who plays the role of Egyptian band-member and handsome ladies' man Khaled, says the film uses the personal touch to handle deep-lying political issues.
    "The film talks about people, and the identity is in the background, and the tension is deep inside, the conflict is inside, all the history and the reality is inside," Bakri said on the Cannes croisette.
    Though Egypt and Israel have officially been at peace since the signing of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty in 1979, the Egyptian public has remained uneasy about their country's relations with Israel, especially given the continuing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
    Egyptian actors in Cairo turned down Kolirin's request to participate in the film, and the director enlisted Palestinian-Israeli and Jewish Israeli actors to play the Egyptian characters.
    The film's flirtatious, sensual Dina, who owns a small coffee shop in the Israeli town, hosts Egyptians Khaled and Tawfiq, the sad, reserved leader of the band played by Sasson Gabai, an Israeli Jew of Iraqi origin. Simon, another member of the Egyptian band played by Palestinian Israeli Khalifa Natour, spends the night at another Israeli home. By early morning, the Jewish and Arab characters end up learning truths about themselves as much as about each other.
    Ronit Elkabetz who plays Dina says her character highlights some of these truths and one of the film's main themes.
    "She has a heart that can contain others, and because she doesn't think of tomorrow or yesterday or good or bad, she can live, she can accept others and she can have respect for others. The most important thing is respect, because when we have respect, we can live, we lose our fear. The most important message of this film is respect," Elkabetz explained.
    Natour, who plays the Egyptian band's clarinet player Simon, said the film's theme of travelling from one country to another to take part in a learning experience extended to touch the acting process.
    "It required linguistic travelling. I had to speak with the Egyptian accent which we all love and which has influenced us since childhood from watching films and plays, so this is also a form of travel," Natour said.
    "It was also a strange experience in that we were wearing the Egyptian flag and Egyptian uniforms. There was also a form of intellectual travel in terms of music, because I had to play the clarinet and I had never played the clarinet in my life," he added.
    The film's enthusiastic reception sparked a buying frenzy at the Marche du Cannes, the yearly film market which takes place alongside the festival.
    "The Band's Visit" has sold its rights to several European countries and to Latin America.
    Kolirin says one of his biggest hopes for the film is to make it the first Israeli work to screen at the Cairo film festival, which takes place in the Arab capital in November and December.
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