Very personal story - Lea Klibanoff
צילום: ישעי רבינוביץ
'Not a classic leftist film'
Lea Klibanoff’s debut documentary offers a glimpse into religious leftist camp; ‘This is not a classic leftist movie, I want to communicate to people who don’t necessarily share leftist views,’ director says
Lea Klibanoff is not your average filmmaker; the up-and-coming Jerusalem-born director grew up in the ultra-Orthodox community, started to attend movies only after she turned 20, and was slated to pursue a promising legal career.
Yet these days, Klibanoff is busy promoting her debut documentary, The Messiah Will Always Come. The film will be presented at the Gottingen International Ethnographic Film Festival in May, and has also been selected for a special screening at the local DocAviv International Documentary Film Festival.
Scene from film
The documentary follows Hagit Ofran, the director of Peace Now’s Settlement Watch team, as she travels across the West Bank in a bid to monitor new settlements. However, the journey also confronts the formerly religious Ofran with her own pain in the face of Israel’s contemporary religious community.
In a special interview with Ynetnews, Klibanoff talks about the reasons that prompted her to pursue a cinematic career and about her own pain. More than anything perhaps, she seeks to convey a simple message: The Messiah Will Always Come is not another typical, anti-Israel leftist movie – it is a film that does not aim to “show that the Left is right,” but to stir broad discourse and dialogue, with rightists as well.
A personal story
Klibanoff, who is still religious today, gradually found herself distancing from the ultra-Orthodox world. She recounts one particular moment in high school that highlighted the process.“I was 16 or 17, and came to school wearing a big bulky jacket. As I was about to hang it, I noticed that I was the only one wearing a jacket like that,” she says. “Everyone had tailored jackets...I realized they plan to get married soon, and also realized I’m at a wholly different place.”
Klibanoff says the Orthodox world she grew up in just wasn’t for her.
“I’m not good with places that limit me and prevent me from realizing my dreams,” she says. “I prefer to fail myself, rather than to have others preventing it from doing something to begin with”
Despite graduating university with distinction and embarking on a legal internship, Klibanoff says she was increasingly drawn to the world of cinema.
“The law only satisfied a certain side of me. It wasn’t satisfying enough,” she says. “The shift into a more artistic world was a way of turning inwards…the legal action on the outside did not allow me to express many inner and personal things.”
Although her debut film monitors Hagit Ofran, Klibanoff says it is to a large extent a personal story.
“Relative to a documentary, it turned out to be very very personal. It touched the issues that bother me most,” she says.
'Our pain is similar'
This is where the conversation becomes tougher for Klibanoff. As a woman still attached and committed to Judaism, she says it pains her to see the religion she grew up with being appropriated by the religious Right.“This is an ideological world I’m greatly opposed to, and I feel that they are appropriating things I grew up with,” she says. “Something in my sense of belonging has been undermined – they are using my world for their own needs…some people stop being religious because of it.”
Klibanoff recalls a stark moment that was especially difficult for her, a scene of youngsters during the disengagement period speaking to the camera, with a song she remembered from childhood playing in the backdrop.
“I’m not saying their pain wasn’t real, but the song had no connection whatsoever to the issue. It was talking about personal self-reflection; it had nothing to do with the disengagement,” she says. “It was terribly difficult for me.”
“While Hagit (Ofran) and I are very different, our pain is similar,” she adds. “Both of us don’t live well with what happened in the religious world. Our own religious world is very different.”
However, Klibanoff makes it clear she is not a “typical leftist” and stresses that she made her movie with a desire to communicate to other audiences as well, including rightists.
“It’s not a classic leftist movie. For one thing, Hagit is very Zionistic. In her view, she is fighting for the future of the State of Israel,” she says. “I want people who do not share my views to look at it and say: “We believe this girl, Hagit. We believe she does it because she cares.”
