Un argentino in Palestina (EN)

Un argentino en Palestina

Selection: 

Director: 

Rodrigo Vasquez

Country: 

  • Argentina
  • United Kingdom

Format: 

Feature film

Type: 

Fiction

Film exhibited in Toulouse: 

Condor, les Axes du Mal, 2004. Premiered in Cannes in 2003.

Synopsis: 

Rodrigo Vázquez is an Argentine that has worked as a war correspondent in the Arab-Israeli war front for 12 years. He documented the horrors of that war not only from the point of view of the anonymous civilian victims, but also from the perspective of the Islamic militiamen and the generals, soldiers and officers of the Israeli Army. In October 2006, Rodrigo began to feel the first symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He left his work in the area of Gaza and returned home to confront the memory of what he’d seen. He had difficulties sleeping, felt depressed, had panic attacks. Now that he’s condition is cured, Rodrigo wants to return to Gaza to wrap a journey he began 12 years ago, at the beginning of the so-called war on terror against islamic extremists. .This time, it’ll be not a fact-finding trip, but a private, intimite human journey to the many people he’s met during a decade of war. This film takes a unique look at the war in Israel-Palestine through life-stories that span a decade from a Latin American viewpoint. In doing so it reveals a hidden threat that links the fates of both Latin America and the Middle East.

Visual concept: 

There are four layers of memory in this film: the footage of the 1960’s and 70’s resistance, the footage shot by the filmmaker between 2001-2005 in Gaza , the footage shot when Hamas took power in Gaza in 2007 and the present day footage which includes Cuba and Bolivia as key locations. Each has its own texture given the time and format used (footage spans more than a decade) and relates to the other layers through the use of exact same locations and camera angles in different periods of time. At the centre of this vision is the passage of time, which is an essential dramatic element in the story. The footage has a film-diary quality that will be edited “a la Chris Marker”.