Berlinale 2024: a Swiss voice cries the despair of the Israeli left

The Swiss-French actress Irène Jacob stars in Shikun, a free adaptation of Eugène Ionescu’s 1959 play Rhinoceros, directed by the Israeli master Amos Gitai. A fable depicting the rise of fascism, it premiered last week at the Berlin Film Festival. The Berlinale this year, now in its 74th edition, closed last Sunday (Feb. 25) convulsed by protests and political controversy. Whereas the Palestinian-Norwegian co-production No Other Land, made by a collective of Palestinian and Jewish Israeli journalists, took the prize for best documentary – and the filmmakers' acceptance speech has already provoked fierce backlash from German politicians -- a rather muted response has welcomed Shikun ('social housing' in Hebrew), the only Israeli film in the main programme. This latest work, a co-production with Switzerland, France, the UK and Brazil, is signed by the country’s foremost filmmaker, Amos Gitai, whose archives are deposited in the Cinémathèque Suisse. Shikun is his first Swiss ...