Israland

Shot during the Gulf War in 1991, the film juxtaposes two very different realities. On one hand, the brutal daily life of the people inhabiting Tel-Aviv forced to seek shelter during the attacks that the American forces launched against the Iraqis. On the other hand, Israeli and Arab workers sharing the same building site while working on a gigantic theme park that will be called Israland. While the former are forced to live at night in bomb shelters, during the day, the latter vent about the mistrust they feel for each other. While Patriot missiles shoot above the sky in Tel-Aviv, on the ground both Israelis and Arabs share the same site to build up an illusion. Thus Eyal Sivan acknowledges the frailty of the nationalist Israeli rhetoric that is indeed threatened by its own ideological weakness. The theme park devoted to the myth of Israel is the other face of a propaganda machine that asks its people to hide in shelters to avoid gas attacks, knowing that it may be perfectly useless. In this film, Sivan challenges the way the state of Israel does manipulate its own image in order to gain political and moral consensus.