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.