Foreign Land

As Israeli society slips into extremism, an Arab actor and a Jewish journalist search for a place where they can belong.

Gassan Abbas was once a famous TV star in Israel. Director Shlomi Eldar was once an Arab Affairs correspondent for Israel's TV news. Both men have discovered that their audiences are getting smaller by the day. Abbas is not getting any new roles, and Eldar's reports are getting pushed to the sidelines of the daily news reports. Israeli society has all lost hope and no longer wants to hear about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Now facing a professional crisis, these two friends are searching for a way to escape, while taking account of how changes in Israel affect them both personally and on a national level.

FOREIGN LAND tells the story of Abbas, an Israeli Arab actor from the town of Umm al-Fahm, and of the film's director Shlomi Eldar, a reporter who covers Arab Affairs for Israeli television. The film begins during rehearsals for a new play, "I Shall Not Hate," produced by Israel's national theater, Habima. Abbas was cast in the role of Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, a man well known to Eldar. During Operation "Cast Lead" (2008) in the Gaza Strip, the real Dr. Abelaish called him during a live broadcast, screaming that his three daughters and his niece were just been killed by a mortar shell fired at his home. Eldar's decision to broadcast the cries of the distraught father sent a chill through his audience in Israel and around the world. It forced the army to extract the surviving members of the family and bring them to Israel for medical treatment. It was a stirring moment in real time, but the play about the incident was a total flop. It turned out that Israel society no longer wants to hear about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, while theaters are wary of performing the play. They feel like they are walking on eggshells in their dealings with the establishment and worried about losing government funding.

Throughout his long career, most of the roles that Abbas played were in some way related to the Palestinian-Israel conflict. Now he is finding it harder and harder to get cast. Meanwhile, Eldar's reports no longer get top coverage on the evening news.

Abbas spent 21 years living in Tel Aviv. Then one day, his children were heard speaking Arabic in preschool. Subjected to a barrage of hate, he decided to pick up and return to Umm al-Fahem, the town he left when he was still a highly regarded TV star. Upon returning there, however, he quickly discovered that Arab society had also grown more extreme. The Islamic Movement controlled the city, and the people now living there were very different from everyone he once knew. As the film was being shot, Gassan's son Nadim was beaten up by the Israeli police, so he decided to leave home and find his future elsewhere. While Gassan encourages his son, he also takes Israeli society to task. Despite all his efforts to integrate, he feels like it rejected him. "We say that our parents are angry at our grandparents, and that we are angry at our parents. I don't want my son to be angry at me. I love my son, but he should go, even if it means I won't see him again," he says.

Director Eldar is also facing a crossroads in his career. He has decided to leave his work on Israeli TV and settle in the U.S. with his family. There, for the first time in his life, he understands what it means to be an outsider. He not only lost that familiar sense of belonging. The emptiness that he now feels is filling up with deep concern over the direction that Israel is heading.

FOREIGN LAND is the story of two men, looking for a place where they can belong, only to discover that it only exists in the very place, where they were born. The film took 6 years for Eldar to complete.

Bleiberg Entertainment presents FOREIGN LAND, a film by Shlomi Eldar. The film recently garnered the Ophir Award, Israel’s equivalent to the Academy Award, as Best Documentary Feature.