Mahmoud Darwich: The Land as Language

Though he has remained an Israeli citizen, the great Arab poet Mahmoud Darwich feels more at home abroad than in Israel, where Palestinian life is impeded by interdictions and roadblocks that are spiritual as well as physical. Filmmakers Simone Bitton - an Israeli Jew - and Elias Sanbar - an Israeli Palestinian - follow Darwich from the Cisjordanian desert to Paris, through Cairo and Beirut, along the route of his exile. They also take us back to the site of his village, which was razed by Israeli soldiers in 1948. Its name, erased from the map, is reborn in Darwich's verse. (His poetry is widely read and sung all over the Arabic-speaking world.) Darwich's moving voice punctuates eloquent images that speak of the poet's separation from his homeland.

Simone Bitton was born in Morocco in 1955. She is both an Israeli and a French citizen and also considers herself as a Moroccan national and an Arab Jew. She graduated from the French Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinematographiques (IDHEC) in 1981 and directed more than 15 documentary films. Her work varies in style from historical inquiries to first-hand reportages and intimate portraits of cutting-edge authors, artists, and political figures. All of her films attest to her deep personal and professional commitment to better representing the complex histories and cultures of the Middle East and North Africa. Several of her works have been broadcast simultaneously on European, Arab, and Israeli television and engendered passionate debate on all sides of the Mid-East conflict. WALL is her first feature film produced for the cinema.,