Israeli director explores conflict through film

"Unacceptable. It's simply unacceptable," Eran Riklis said, referring to the slightly blurry English subtitles running across the bottom of his film, "The Syrian Bride."

Riklis, an internationally renowned Israeli filmmaker, screened his newest movie in Frist Campus Center on Sunday night in preparation for its American debut next month.

The film, a collaboration between an Israeli director and a Palestinian-Israeli writer and cast, is about the human aspect of the Syrian-Israeli conflict in the Golan Heights.

"Dealing with the Israeli-Syrian border is a good way to deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without actually getting into it, which is almost impossible because it is so much in the news and the situation changes every day," Riklis said.

"This film is my way of getting to issues which are political, but beyond that, are really human," he added. "It is about borders, but not necessarily physical borders."

The event was sponsored by Salaam Shalom, a joint initiative between the Department of Near Eastern Studies and the Program in Judaic Studies, and included a brief discussion about the movie in Hebrew, a screening of the film and a subsequent question and answer session in English.

"Salaam Shalom is a special project to facilitate better understanding of the Arab and Israeli cultures, to try to build a bridge of better communication through cultural exchanges," said Esther Robbins, a lecturer in Hebrew, who brought Riklis to campus after seeing his film in Israel last year. "The Arab-Israeli conflict has an emotional aspect to it. Perhaps culture can alleviate some of the anguish and frustration."

In the past year, "The Syrian Bride" has made the circuit of international film festivals, winning more awards than any previous Israeli film and setting international box office records.

"It is a very human film," Robbins said. "It shows that politics can interfere with daily, simple human activities. It does not blame the Israelis or the Syrians. It blames the bureaucracy of the two countries in conflict."

Though the movie has a Palestinian-Israeli writer and cast and depicts the Golan Heights as an occupied territory, most Arab countries have refused to show the film because of its Israeli director.

"In the end, the film is always considered the director's film," Riklis said. "The old conventions of where people come from, what passport they have, still apply, even to a film."