Just as Jan Ijäs starting filming at Israel’s northern border with Gaza, the Israeli military launched a ground offensive. At the same time, an independent United Nations investigative team condemned Israel’s earlier actions in Gaza as genocide. Little of the fighting is shown apart from some explosions in the distance, and the international condemnation is entirely absent. Ijäs instead chooses a purely Israeli perspective, focusing on locations where monuments commemorate previous military actions and the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023. But these are also places where families come to picnic and romantic couples enjoy the sunset.
We hear a cheerful, naïve-sounding voice reading out comments left by visitors on TripAdvisor and Google—from complaints about dirty toilets to enthusiastic accounts of the peaceful silence and magnificent view. Ijäs shot on infrared film, revealing things normally hidden from the human eye.
Stills
