Provocative filmmaker aims to change perceptions

May 5, 2005


Eytan Fox once again raises a controversial issue by presenting both sides of the story, reports Craig Mathieson.

On a day off from shooting in Tel Aviv, Walk on Water director Eytan Fox was walking down the street with his female lead, German actor Carolina Peters. The two were eating ice-cream when she suddenly asked if they could cross to the opposite footpath - she was scared to pass an elderly Jewish couple. "I feel they can see through me, they can see I'm German," she whispered to Fox. "They can see my background."

That sense of national and personal history weighing on individuals is captured in Fox's movie, a thriller about an emotionally bankrupt Mossad agent assigned to befriend two liberal German siblings in the hope of getting information on the grandfather they've never met, a Nazi war criminal.

"Younger people in Israel and Germany don't want to deal with their history any more," says Fox (above). Now aged 40, the filmmaker has an eye for issues rarely touched upon in his homeland. Openly gay in a highly masculine society, his previous release, 2002's Yossi and Jagger, was about an affair between two gay army officers.

With Walk on Water, he deals with how the Holocaust affects generations born long after it concluded.

He hopes it will change perceptions about Israel and he eagerly travels where possible to discuss it.

"We had a screening for 500 students in Paris - very tense atmosphere," he recalls. "Afterwards, this young guy came up to me and said, 'I hate Israel - whenever Israel is mentioned on CNN, I see soldiers roaming the West Bank, but I realise you're also struggling with these issues and some of you want peaceful solutions'. That was moving for me - if I can start a dialogue, that's the most important thing."

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