Amos Gitai on the power of art: “Picasso, not Franco, won the battle over Gernika’s memory”

For Amos Gitai, the landscape around Jericho holds the residue of centuries of conflict. “These stones of Jericho are all that remains after all these battles, all this hatred, all this manipulation. All that remains is a pile of stones,” the Israeli filmmaker says in discussing The Road to Jericho, his hybrid documentary presented at the Venice festival.

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These stones of Jericho are all that remains after all these battles, all this hatred, all this manipulation. All that remains is a pile of stones.

The film moves between the present, the past, archival material and the places where those histories unfolded. Gitai describes it as a political poem made in the context of a “very hostile and toxic situation.” Its purpose, he says, is to encourage dialogue, not simply arguments or hatred of the other.

Gitai sees complexity on both sides of the Middle East conflict, describing them as simultaneously “angels and bastards.” He wants viewers to work as interpreters rather than consumers. The documentary’s dry, searching style brings in memories and voices linked to the region, including Arthur Miller, Samuel Fuller, Hannah Schygulla, Irène Jacob, Jeanne Moreau and Yitzhak Rabin.

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very hostile and toxic situation

He also reflects on the shared linguistic and historical ground between Hebrew and Arabic. Hebrew, he notes, has no present tense, only past and future, and Arabic has a similar concept of time. Those common elements, he argues, should support understanding. The film includes a Hebrew Yom Kippur prayer, Hannah Schygulla reciting Oscar Wilde’s “Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves,” and contemporary images such as a small Bedouin school.

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angels and bastards