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"Ahed's Knee" tells of an Israeli moviemaker
who arrives in a dusty desert town for a screening of one of his
productions. There he meets a young culture ministry official,
who asks him to sign a form listing discussion topics he wishes
to explore.
That triggers the moviemaker's outrage, but he also displays
moments of affection for Israeli, recording a desert sunset on
his phone for his dying mother, and sharing a joyous car ride
with a local to the sound of Bill Withers' "Lovely Day".
The film has divided critics, and Lapid said his own conflicted
sense of identity had crept into it.
"A sort of intimacy towards Israel sneaked behind my back and
got into the screen," he told a news conference, adding that he
was more interested in inner conflicts than in politics.
The film jumps between flashbacks to its filmmaking hero's time
in military service, where the soldiers play cruel tricks on
each other, to his growing despair in the desert.
"I want to show how people's souls are changed, tormented,
perverted sometimes by a state, by a place, less than talking
about the state of Israel itself," he said.
Back at home in Tel Aviv Lapid has started a new project - a
film about Ahed Tamini, a Palestinian girl who in 2017, aged 16,
slapped an Israeli soldier and served a prison term.
She became a hero to campaigners against the occupation of the
West Bank.
(Reporting by Sarah White and Michaela Cabrera; editing by John
Stonestreet)
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