“It’s not a war movie in the conventional sense, one that deals with fighting forces and commanders. Instead, it places the war in a film about people - about people living in a city. Very, very different people who all want to live,” said Oded Raz, the director of Jerusalem ’67, an English-language drama about the Six Day War that will have its world premiere at the Miami Jewish Film Festival.
The festival, which is run by Igor Shteyrenberg, will take place from January 14-29 (https://miamijewishfilmfestival.org/) at theaters around Miami.
It’s one of the largest and most diverse Jewish film festivals in the world, showing dozens of feature films and documentaries that explore different aspects of Jewish life from around the world. Guests this year include Oscar-winning Argentine filmmaker Juan José Campanella, whose documentary about the Bibas family, Bibas: Murdered for Being Jewish, will have its premiere there, and producer Nancy Spielberg and director Tom Shoval with their award-winning documentary about released hostage David Cunio, A Letter to David.
Raz, who has directed such films and television series as Maktub and False Flag, and producer Joseph Schick will attend the Jerusalem ’67 premiere for a post-screening conversation.
Jerusalem ’67 is a gripping, fact-based drama that brings the Six-Day War to life through the experiences of its main characters. One of these is Sarah (Yael Grobglas, best known for the series, Jane the Virgin, and the zombie movie Jeruzalem), a mother and tour guide who gets swept up into the fighting after the war breaks out as she is on her way to pick up her children from school. Trained as a medic, she starts to drive an ambulance and treats the wounded all over the city, never hesitating even as the fighting intensifies. The character is loosely based on Esther Arditi, a medic who arrived at the Western Wall with the paratroopers.
Raz, who grew up in Jerusalem, said, “Sarah’s decision not to return to her children, not to take them to a shelter, but to continue rescuing people, to get into the ambulance and say, ‘This is what matters right now,’ is an extremely brave and unusual choice. Some viewers will say, ‘How can a mother do such a thing?’ Others will say, ‘I admire her. This is the right thing to do.’ The moment she acts against expectation, something powerful is created.”
Throughout the fighting, Sarah forges a bond with a gentle doctor, Rafi (Itzik Cohen of Fauda), and it turns out that both of them are Holocaust survivors. Her husband, Moshe (Daniel Gad, who starred in the Yom Kippur War film, The Stronghold and the series, Line in the Sand and Shababnikim), works at a government job, but he serves in the Jerusalem Brigade, a ragtag collection of Jerusalemite soldiers of all ages.
“Moshe is not a classic soldier. He goes to war without wanting to. The Jerusalem Brigade was formed out of fear that regular army forces wouldn’t be able to reach Jerusalem in time. It was essentially a local force - Jerusalemites who left their homes and reported to Camp Allenby,” said Raz.
An expression of diversity
“Unlike the rest of the army, it was really a hodgepodge of people: a shoemaker, a carpenter, a lawyer, a doctor; a 22-year-old and a 60-year-old. It was a very cohesive group, but also extremely diverse: Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jews, new immigrants. That diversity is something very unique to Jerusalem, and we really tried to convey it.”
A key drama in the film is the conflict between the husband and wife over how to respond to the threat of war: “Moshe says, “Let’s go to Tel Aviv, let’s get out of here,’ and wants to take the children somewhere safer. And Sarah says, “No, no, we’re not going anywhere. This is our city. This is our place.’ For me, that confrontation is very moving.”
Another major character is Avner (Guy Adler, who was in Big Bad Wolves and The Angel), a young paratrooper commander leading his men straight to the front lines, well aware that this war will change his life forever.
The film highlights the chaos of the war and paints a vivid portrait of the tense days leading up to it. An early scene shows Sarah’s family having lunch with their friends in the Abu Tor neighborhood. When their children are playing soccer, and the ball rolls outside the fence, her son impulsively runs after it and risks being shot by a Jordanian sniper just a few meters away. It’s chilling to see how precarious life in Jerusalem was then, and the meticulously researched movie vividly captures the city's atmosphere in those days.
While the film is about these characters, Raz said, “Jerusalem itself becomes a character. We wanted to convey the beauty, the strength of the stones, the greenery, but also the fragility and the almost unbearable closeness. A borderline cuts through neighborhoods… That was the reality.” The movie takes place in many Jerusalem landmarks, including the Kotel, of course, but also Ammunition Hill, the Rockefeller Museum, Mount Zion, Jaffa Street, and other spots around the city.
Raz drew on his own military experience to recreate the chaos of war: “War is uncertainty. You plan your life, and suddenly everything changes. I tried to express that lack of certainty in every way possible. A woman walks down the street, and suddenly shells start falling - that’s a true story. That’s how the war began in Jerusalem. In Moshe’s first battle, he doesn’t even know where to aim. He turns, and suddenly the enemy is right there. At Ammunition Hill, chaos is constant: wounded being carried, ambulances arriving and coming under fire. Everything is a mix - loss of control, fear, the attempt to hold onto something stable while making decisions whose consequences you can’t predict.”
The climax, as the soldiers reach the Kotel, was filmed at the “Little Kotel,” near the Western Wall. “Today, so many films are shot against green screens. There’s no world, nothing tangible, and yet actors are expected to feel something. I believe that when you can give an actor the real thing, something else comes out of them. We filmed the entire final scene on the original stones of the Western Wall, not in the large plaza people know today, but in a much smaller, fenced-off area near the Dung Gate. Back then, the Wall was a very small space, surrounded by a fence. It’s hard to imagine today. It was an extremely complicated shoot, almost no technical equipment was allowed, but it was worth it… I felt that standing there, facing real stones just meters from the actual Wall, did something to the actors. There was an energy, an experience, a grounding that can’t be replicated… Directing that scene was incredibly emotional…. You could feel that something real was happening to the actors.”
Raz does not see the movie as political, and there is a key scene where Sarah risks her life to provide medical treatment to a wounded Arab child in the Old City. “After what she has been through up to that point, she already understands that she is no longer the same person [that she was in the beginning]. She follows her instinct. She sees no difference between helping a Jewish civilian and helping an Arab child and his mother. In the end, she is saving others because she herself was once a wounded animal no one saved. By saving others, she is, in a way, saving herself.”
Raz hopes the film will appeal to both Jewish audiences interested in Israel and others who just want to see a gripping drama. “First and foremost, I want to make a good film, a high-quality cinematic experience. I think it offers an hour and a half of emotional, engaging storytelling and a glimpse into a crucial chapter in the history of Israel and the Jewish people. At its heart is a powerful story about a woman who goes against the current. The war, ideology, and the very existence of Israel are present - but they surround the human stories,” he said.