Words Are Bullshit – Interview with Israeli Filmmaker Eran Kolirin

I had the opportunity to meet Israeli director Eran Kolirin. For those who don't know him, he's the author of two terrific films that I loved (he has made many other things, of course, but I want to keep this introduction short).

The first one is The Band's Visit (2007). The film tells the story of the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra, a band of eight Egyptian classical musicians who travel to Israel to perform at the Arab Cultural Center in Petah Tiqva, but take the wrong bus because of a language miscommunication and wind up in a small town named Bet Hatikva, in the middle of the desert. With no transportation out of town and no hotels to stay at, the band settles at a restaurant owned by Dina, who offers them lodging.
The second one is Let It Be Morning (2021). The film centers on Sami, a Palestinian Israeli citizen who works at a tech company in Jerusalem and is living a double life with his Jewish Israeli mistress. When he heads to his family's village for his brother's wedding, he wakes up to find it encircled by Israeli soldiers and isolated from the world due to an arbitrary blockade.

Kolirin was at the Locarno Film Festival to present a quite peculiar film: Some Notes on the Current Situation. With this title you might expect – as I did when a friend had signaled this movie in the rich program of the festival – a film that confronts explicitly the war in Gaza or the state of democracy in Israel. Not at all. Presented as a "philosophical tragicomedy," this film is very close to Dada and Theater of the Absurd.

This project was started by chance when a friend of Kolirin's told him about a class of very talented young actors, asking him to write something for their final project. This happened shortly before October 7th.

Some Notes on the Current Situation is composed of six episodes: "A Wall", with four people involved in a strange ritual for rebooting Earth; "A Formation III", with a platoon of soldiers preparing to film a movie for an international streaming service; "A Road", where a bride attempting to push a car that won't start; "A Pit", where the life of a woman who moved to the countryside changes unexpectedly during an encounter with municipality workers digging in her garden; "Snow", with a young, disoriented couple of time traveler is attempting to deliver a truckload of snow to a movie set in the desert; "A Hasidic Tale", a traditional fable about an Inuit woman, a yeshiva student and his nose.

Here's a transcription of the conversation with Kolirin, with minor editing. The full interview is available to registered users (registration is free) – sign up to read the complete conversation.

Interview with Eran Kolirin

First of all, thank you for the film.

Thank you.

Viewing Some Notes on the Current Situation raised many questions for me.

I hope I can answer them.

The film begin with an overtext which is a punch in the face for the viewer: "Before World War III".

Yeah. What is the question?

The feeling of this overtext in the viewer.

Yeah, maybe we are already inside World War III. Maybe this title is also nostalgic because we are already in a world war and what we see was maybe our last chance before, you know…

You know, I said before, when you read all those great artworks that came after the war, and you know about these times and you wonder how it happened, how does it happen that people go into this madness? And so in a certain way, as a writer, it's kind of interesting for me to live and to see how people… are completely crazy. Sometimes you just see that there is something that looks to me like a disease or like something in people's brains, something that spreads in the brains, and suddenly you look around and you talk with people and you don't understand – are we talking about the same thing? And you see it happening, and then a lot of questions that you had in the past are answered. Yeah, it's this sensation of being estranged from the world.

In last chapter two characters spoke explicitly of this sensation of being estranged from the world, discussing the debate between Heidegger and Cassirer in Davos in 1929.

There's this feeling that yes, you are disconnected. And of course, yes, the movie... because it's also, you know, you have this Davos debate when philosophers were celebrities, and I've wanted to make a film about this Davos debate many times because just before the world goes into the craziest times, those two philosophers meet and they ask "what is the human being?" and it's like the answer will come very soon.

Deep question, rough answer. Can we see Some Notes on the Current Situation as your most politically charged work, even more than Let It Be Morning?

You know, I've been often asked about my films being political, and I'm always a bit worried – not worried but some people hear the word "political" and they close off. But political is not separated from the way you live. So how can you make a non-political film now? I mean, I wake up in the morning, I open the phone, and the rest of the day you meet people and you see what's happening and it's crazy. So it's definitely the most immediate reaction film because the other films were made over the course of seven years until I get the money, until I write it. But this one was done in the moment that it happens. I even wrote it as it was happening, and I shot it while it was happening. So the feeling of immediacy… it's like telling the feeling now. That's my most current film – it's a film that happens now and carries the feeling of now.

Because the project started just before October 7th?

But you could feel it coming, you know. It wasn't a surprise if you were sensitive. It was like this darkness coming, like a boiling pot … you could feel that it was going to happen. And it happened. I started writing before, but October 7th happened, I think, in the middle while I was writing it. So you have around two-thirds of the film written before, and then like two films after. And you can even see the moment in the film – it's when he's lost in the palm trees and he goes back and a year is gone, and now they are in a completely different place. I wrote it in real time. It's like I wrote it until now, and now it's my sensation that within a moment we went past the point of no return. Things got accelerated.

You said it's the most contemporary, immediate film, but it's also the movie that is the most absurd. It's like in the current situation we need to move in a completely different direction from realism.

Yeah, but the surreal tradition and absurd tradition are very much connected to points of wars and craziness in the world. For me, these were the artworks that shaped my life: Beckett, Kafka, Ionesco – all the people who were engaging this situation with complete absurdism, basically telling you "it's bullshit." And it framed my life, framed my artistic point of view. These were the things that I liked. And I feel that now reality has kind of merged with that because I came to the point in my own life where I see the world now and I understand why they wrote like that. Because words are bullshit and they have no meaning. If you say something, then it's blown out of context, out of vision and history. You have so many stories of history that there's not one. Everybody holds their own private story. So what is more appropriate than going back to the tradition of absurdism and surrealism? It's very natural.

Do you think it will be possible in the future to make a realistic movie about Gaza today?

I cannot. I don't understand. I don't know about others, but for me I cannot. I feel that words or realism make it very small, you know. You cannot speak about those things. You can be abstract, you can scream, but you cannot... But maybe there will be in the future, I don't know about it.

This non-realistic approach still contains some direct criticism of the Israeli state. And the film was also funded by Israeli institutions. Were there problems or criticism?

First of all, the money came after we shot the film, so I was shooting with no money and then I got some money for post-production. But I think people misunderstand when they see "Israeli film funding." I mean, I understand the question because I always ask myself when I see films from Iran, Russia, Belarus – how are they allowed? But this is when you look at things from afar. But life is complicated. It's also in the history of Italy – how did Fellini make films under that government? But he made films because there are still people, there are still some good people here and there who will support you. So it's this game. It's not like you have the hero and the villain. It's not working that way. It's a living thing. Of course there are threats, there are people who don't like it and will use it as an excuse to take away money. There will be people who will use it for their own campaign, like they did with Let It Be Morning. But there will also be other people who say "no, it's okay". As long as it goes like that, you find your way. If it goes to complete shutdown, we'll see.

The six episodes of this movie – were they in this order from the beginning or did they change?

No, no, they are in the order that I wrote them, and I didn't know where I was going. I started, I wrote the first episode, and I didn't even know that I wanted to make a movie. It was just this suggestion by my friend. He said, "We have this good acting class," so I wrote the first one and it was like a fountain starting to flow. Then the second one came… You can see my own process as a filmmaker. The first one is like "okay, we try to do something, we try to push for something new". And then the second one is like "okay, so what film are we making?". It's like talking to myself – "ah no, we make a big Netflix film" – but then it's ironic because the idea was that the world needs a reboot.

Maybe if the reboot of the world episode, instead of the first one, would have been the latest, the film would have been more optimistic.

You're right. I played with my mind, thinking sometimes this would be the last and it would be like a new beginning. But I have no answer. That's how it went and it made sense somehow.

In the second episode we see the soldier preparing for a Netflix movie and in the third, "A Road", there is a satire of action movie. Some Notes on the Current Situation is also a critique of commercial cinema?

Yes. It's about trying to find myself. It's about commercial cinema but also about festival films, because I am expected in a film to make a political statement. So in the second film someone says "apartheid" and he says "oh, radical, okay, that's a radical film". It's like a play: "okay, I can be radical here, the word 'apartheid,' it's a radical film". So you have this kind of artistic film which are radical, and then you have Netflix films which are just plain stupid. And who am I in the middle there? I want something else. I want the feeling that I had when I watched an Angelopoulos film. That's what I want.

Another element I found common in the six episodes is maybe the idea of a fresh start - like trying to push the car, and also putting history in a hole and covering it up.

I think with all my films there was this thing about ending and new start. In Let It Be Morning it ends with the morning coming and suddenly the gate is open. The Exchange also ended in a new morning, and even The Band's Visit ended this way, they had the night and then the new morning. It's true that here it starts with the new morning and it ends in this old-time dark room, in darkness in some way. But I understand, yes, there is this struggle. It's like trying to be born again. You feel like you need to go out of something because it's so… I can see it in the film also, this yearning for a new beginning, for something to take us out of here. Maybe aliens will take us to another planet or something, because it doesn't work. It doesn't work.

Last question. You worked with young actors at the end of their training. If you had worked with professional actors, would the result have been the same?

No, I think you can never say "what if". That is the DNA of this film. It started for me thinking about them. And like you said, a fresh beginning, something clean. So it's part of it, the young actors. If it was old actors, it would have become more heavy, and it has this quality that with all the darkness, it's still fresh. It's not heavy. So I'm happy, I feel blessed that I worked with those young actors. And I have one professional actor – the rabbi at the end – and he makes a good performance of an established actor. It's a good balance. I'm happy with it.