Gay film faces challenges
The makers of an Israeli film about a gay Palestinian who finds love in Tel Aviv complained about audience backlash at home and abroad.
Director Eytan Fox and his partner, screenwriter and producer Gal Uchovsky, were at the Toronto Film Festival this week to promote “The Bubble,” which explores the trials faced by a homosexual Israeli-Palestinian couple.
“It’s not an easy movie to make. It’s not as though people in Israel say ‘This is beautiful, wow, we love it,’ ” Uchovsky told Reuters.
Abroad, meanwhile, the movie has been faced boycotts over Israel’s recent war in Lebanon. “During and after the war, film festivals canceled screenings of Israeli films because of the negative sentiments against Israel, and I can understand some of these emotions and I can identify,” Fox said.
“I think they made a mistake, because it’s our job to make films. It’s our job to use film as a means of dialogue, even in the worst times, when people are making terrible mistakes.”
Fox and Uchovsky’s last project, the post-Holocaust espionage drama “Walking on Water,” was Israel’s highest-grossing movie.
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