T-Port Blog

Do you have a philosophy behind your filmmaking? Or do you feel like you belong to a particular artistic movement from the present day or past? Could you tell us about it?

Throughout my career, I have been influenced by various ideas, but in recent years, I find myself mostly left with questions about the actual role of art. Should an artist merely project their inner world onto a screen? How much of our creation is driven by a simple need for recognition? I don’t feel I belong to any particular artistic movement anymore; I am simply in a state of searching. Deeply unsettled by the situation around us, I am just trying to understand it, without looking to affiliate myself with any grand titles.

JAMILA’S LOOP is very much a part of this ongoing search. If I am completely honest, the project initially stemmed from a standard, perhaps even selfish, urge to simply make another film. But as my co-creator Gili and I dug deeper and were confronted with the harsh existential reality of the stateless community living right next to us, my mindset began to shift. It wasn’t about adopting a rigid agenda. It became a simpler, human process: I am just a human being, trying to observe, trying to see what I can learn about myself through the people in front of me. It turned into a quiet hope that I could somehow channel my experience to help make sense of this reality, and offer whatever modest help my skills might allow.

Living through the endless, tragic war of the past three years, where the dehumanization of the people around us has become so severe, my doubts about the role of art have only deepened. I don’t have absolute answers. I just find myself wondering whether, in times like these, the only tentative justification for creating art is the attempt to resist that dehumanization. Not through grand declarations, but by simply trying to look at one another and gently search for our shared humanity.

If you could watch one film on a loop forever, what would it be?

A film that comes to mind is KOYAANISQUATSI. I remember how hypnotic it was-the automatic repetition and the existential human condition it portrayed were completely addictive to me when I first saw it. Add to that Philip Glass’s score, which is a combination I deeply love.

But honestly, I don’t think I’d ever want to be stuck with it in an endless loop. That sounds like hell to me! Especially since I just finished making a film about people who are forced to live in an endless loop in reality. I would much rather break out of the loop than stay inside it.

Tell us about your film. What is it about? How did you choose to tell its story?

The film is called JAMILA’S LOOP. It tells the story of a young Bedouin woman who is officially “stateless.” This means she is not registered anywhere in the system; she essentially does not exist in any official records. Because she has no ID, birth certificate, or documentation, she is barred from living a normal life. She cannot pursue higher education, open a bank account, get a driver’s license, or have health insurance.

Her life is stuck in an endless loop of trying to prove her existence to the authorities, but the answer she always gets is: “To get an ID, you must bring proof that you exist.” And since she doesn’t have that proof, she can’t get an ID. That is the loop.

When it came to how we chose to tell her story, the decision to use animation was first and foremost out of necessity and protection. It took Gili and me a year to earn the trust of Jamila and her family. Because they are all in this situation-even her grandmother is stateless-they are understandably very suspicious. We realized we couldn’t make a traditional documentary. People who are afraid to leave their village for fear of being detained indefinitely without papers are obviously not going to want to be filmed. Animation allowed us to tell her story while keeping her safe.

Artistically, we used the animation to mediate her experience. We chose a drawing style with a trembling, “boiling” line-intentionally unpolished, shifting, and never fully closed. It is a line on the edge of existence, deliberately undefined and lacking detail, which mirrors Jamila’s own fragile and unstable existence in the eyes of the state.

What challenges have you encountered while embarking on your film project? How did you seek to overcome them?

Gili and I actually met while working on a different project. Through her work, she was spending a lot of time in the area where Jamila lives. I had mentioned to her my desire to make a film about Bedouin life, though I didn’t have a specific focus yet. Gili started sharing her impressions from the field with me, and when we were first told about the existence of “stateless” Bedouins, I honestly couldn’t believe it. It was shocking. I couldn’t comprehend what that meant for the human experience; it seemed completely absurd, absolute madness.

We were then introduced to Yael Agmon from the NGO “Atid B’Midbar” (Future in the Desert). Jamila’s school principal had reached out to Yael, telling her about Jamila’s unique spirit, her intelligence, and her fierce determination. Jamila’s dream was to become a teacher in her village, but she had no way to fulfill it. Yael took Jamila’s case on as a personal project, and Gili and I joined forces with her. We went through mountains of documents and bureaucratic correspondence, diving deep into the agonizing “loop” of her existence. Then began the delicate process of meeting Jamila and her father, slowly building trust, and explaining how we hoped our artistic work could help their cause.

Can you share the most important lessons you learned through the process of making your film?

It was a harsh lesson on the absurdity of bureaucracy. I saw how easily people can be left in a terrible limbo of existence, facing the complete indifference and “small-mindedness” of an establishment that is perhaps too afraid to even deal with them.

For me, this bureaucratic erasure sits on the exact same spectrum of dehumanization that eventually leads to the extreme horrors of the terrible war we are experiencing now. Because of this gravity, it is hard to say I “enjoyed” the process. But it was profoundly rewarding.

Earning the trust of Jamila and her family, and managing to capture and present this harsh human reality as accurately and respectfully as possible, was the greatest reward.

If you could go back in time to pre-production and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?

I would probably tap myself on the shoulder and gently remind myself that drawing 12,000 individual frames by hand takes a lot of time!

It is very easy to romanticize classical animation during pre-production, but the physical reality of pencil and eraser on paper is an absolute marathon. My advice would be: stretch your hands, buy more pencils, and prepare for a very long ride.