Cannes Film Festival: the rage of Nadav Lapid and "Le Genou d'Ahed", the urgency of a film
Avshalom Pollak and Nur Fibak in "Le Genou d'Ahed", by Israeli director Nadav Lapid, in the running for the 2021 Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
© lesfilmsdubal
Text by: Siegfried Forster Follow
5 mins
With
Ahed's Knee,
Israeli director Nadav Lapid, 46, greatly rocked and impressed the Cannes Film Festival, and far beyond.
In the running for the Palme d'Or, it is a partly autobiographical, political and poetic film, always on the cutting edge, between political-cinematographic manifesto, radical documentary and theatrical parable.
Publicity
Read more
The opening scene is as violent as it is sordid.
Imprisoned by the occupation army, summoned to an office that looks like a police station, the young Palestinian activist Ahed is confronted with her past.
At 16, she slapped a soldier, her sister and brother were killed by the army, her father thrown in jail.
To put an end to his activities against the established order and the repressive machinery of the government, a state agent claims to shoot him in the kneecap to place him under house arrest for life.
Thus, Ahed's knee makes its grand entrance into history.
Framed as a close-up personality, this key part for every movement of the body begins to dance and sing.
"
Where is your victory
?
In martyrdom.
"Let the madness begin ...
When the director and the soldiers land at the same time
Very slowly, we realize that all the facts told are indeed real.
But, at the same time, we are in the cast of director Y's new film. The latter, visibly broke and very affected by his mother's cancer, agrees to screen his most famous film in a small town of 3,000 inhabitants in full desert.
And it is not insignificant that the small airliner which brings Y to the Arava desert, at the same time transports soldiers supposed to defend the occupied territories.
Because, far from everything, the repression felt turns out to be the same.
Even in these remote areas, Israel, denounced by Y as "
a nationalist and racist Jewish state
", reframes and oppresses each dissenting opinion, requires each artist to fill out a form with the themes discussed.
On site, the committed director is greeted by Yahalom (Nur Fibak, magnificent), young, beautiful, intelligent and incredibly attractive.
His passion for books and his conviction of culture as a means of liberation and emancipation have boosted his career.
She was appointed Deputy Director of Libraries at the Ministry of Culture.
A position that forces him to carry out orders completely against his beliefs.
This State which "
spews out all that is different
"
It is on this ground, or rather quicksand, that Nadav Lapid, winner of the 2019 Golden Bear for
Synonyms,
constructs his scenario of formidable and diabolical efficiency. When Y tells Yahalom about his terrible experiences of hazing and torture during military service, no one can guess his role in this story. In this space between what we display and what we hide, Nadav Lapid deconstructs Israeli society and this state which "
spews out everything that is different
".
Admittedly, the film takes a very clear point of view, but despite its repeated charges against the policies of the State of Israel, it avoids being Manichean.
It highlights the extent to which Israeli citizens are tearing and destroying each other, and reveals the degree of mistrust, contempt and aggression each assimilated because of the policy of oppression imposed.
When Nadav Lapid makes the camera dance
The Israeli director's camera play is extraordinary. He makes every shot alive, surprising, confusing. Written in just two weeks and shot with very little means, the result is astounding with intelligence and inventiveness. For some sequences, Lapid makes the camera dance, in accordance with the very sensitive acting of Avshalom Pollak, who is also a choreographer and artistic director of a dance company. Scene by scene, image by image, it surprises us or makes us laugh: for example when it marks its territory by peeing on the sand. To his dying mother, he sends the sunset with the dedication “
the last minute of this day
”. What a great metaphor for the urgency of this film.
►
To read also:
Cannes Film Festival: a glamorous opening ceremony to break the curse of the Covid
Newsletter
Receive all international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_FR
Cannes 2021
Cinema
Israel
Culture
our selection