Happy Birthday, Mr. Mograbi
Avi Mograbi, a documentary filmmaker, is hired by a TV producer to make a film about the celebrations of Israel´s 50th anniversary. The producer is tuned into the media, and his mood swings accordingly. When the unemployment crisis breaks out, he washes his hands of the anniversary film and seeks to make a penetrating, socially engaged film instead. The deadlock in the peace process leads the producer to a decision to make a film that will bring peace to the Middle East. During the newly awakened Gulf crisis the producer shuts himself away behind polyethylane sheets, gas mask on. At this point he is not interested in making any film at all. In the meantime, a Palestinian film producer from the Palestinian Authority contacts Mograbi. The Palestinians, too, mark the 50th anniversary, but of the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem – the Nakba (catastrophe). He asks Mograbi to help him produce a film about the Nakba. He wants him to shoot locations that used to be Palestinian and which then became Jewish settlements following the 1948 war. He wants only pictures of places, no interviews or events – just places, houses, ruins, signs of life lost. The same filmmaker tells the camera a story about himself, a story involving the purchase of a lot in the outskirts of the city. The project turns into a nightmare. Questions of lot ownership lead to violence between neighbors. He develops an obsession of self documentation. Fragments of supposedly unplanned shooting find their way into the film and construct a personal, seemingly documentary, narrative... The film becomes an argument between its three narratives. Each one tries to overcome the other – one story may take control for a minute, then another disrupts and takes over...
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