Italian cinema, it must be said, is a stable of imbecility crowned with Lions, Davids, Nastri, Globes, Ciak d'Oro... where the most followed event on TV news and social networks is the stars' dresses on the red carpet... they talk about "tailors" as they once talked about the beauty of the SS uniforms produced by Ugo Boss... they were truly beautiful under the swastikas, especially when they were exterminating millions of Jews (homosexuals, madmen, gypsies, disabled people, communists, anarchists) in the extermination camps... it's a shame that Israeli Zionists have forgotten or manipulated the Holocaust in favor of a new catastrophe of which they are the main executioners. If I'm asked if I'm anti-Semitic, I say no; if I'm anti-Zionist, I say of course! I don't like tyrants of any race... they should be fricasseeed (an ancient method of cooking meat, typical of French peasant cuisine at the time of the 1789 Revolution) and fed to stray dogs... made to experience the fear (and piss themselves) they inflicted on the least of the earth for centuries. Humans, artists, and any person of any faith or skin color have the right to express their opinion before any court. With all the risks that entails, including the risk of losing their lives. Shai Carmeli-Pollak is an Israeli director, screenwriter, photographer, and peace activist who makes political and social films... after the Second Intifada in the early 2000s, he joined the direct action group Anarchists Against the Wall. Along with other Israeli and international activists, Shai Carmeli-Pollak mobilized in Palestinian communities in the West Bank to physically and nonviolently oppose the construction of the Israeli government's concrete wall. The Anarchists Against the Wall collective rejected the old adages of generic pacifism (intellectual lobbies, aphasic conferences, philosophical chatter) and organized sabotage of the barriers, blocking bulldozers, and promoting mass demonstrations. Action on the ground, however, had to be coordinated and led by popular committees in Palestinian villages, not by politicians. Israeli and international activists offered their bodies as "shields" against Israeli repression. In 2006, Shai Carmeli-Pollak took her camera directly into the demonstrations to document the brutality of the military. From this field experience, he shoots from within the movement, Bil'in My Love (2006), which has been called a "documentary masterpiece"... bears witness to the resistance of the inhabitants of the Palestinian village of Bil'in against the construction of the Israeli separation wall in the West Bank... in 2008 the Bil'in village committee and the group Anarchists Against the Wall were jointly awarded the prestigious Carl von Ossietzky Medal for Human Rights in Berlin.
The Anarchists Against the Wall group disbanded in 2010, but its libertarian legacy emerges in every sequence of The Sea.In the documentary Refugees (Ha-Plitim, 2008), Shai Carmeli-Pollak films the dramatic situation of migrants crossing from Sudan and Eritrea... flows of people who cross the Sinai desert on foot... with nothing, empty-handed... facing harrowing conditions as they cross the border between Egypt and Israel in a desperate attempt to seek refuge, some protection, a welcome from the devastation of dictatorships and persecution in their countries... and are harshly rejected, beaten, or confined to detention facilities by the State of Israel. The director, in an interview with the American magazine Cineaste (America's leading magazine on the art and politics of cinema), says that with Refugees he wanted to highlight the historical and moral paradox of a nation founded to provide refuge to a persecuted people, which instead finds itself rejecting and persecuting other human beings fleeing desperation. A section of the United Nations (UN), the International Court of Justice (ICJ), international human rights organizations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch (HRW), Euro-Med Monitor, the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), and many countries around the world... consider the genocide in Gaza a crime against humanity.
In the fictional film The Sea (2025), Shai Carmeli-Pollak recounts the journey of Khaled (Muhammad Gazawi), a 12-year-old Palestinian boy who clandestinely passes through Israeli checkpoints to see the sea for the first time. The film was produced with a $598,600 grant from the Israel Film Foundation and triumphed at the 2025 Ophir Awards (Israel's Oscars), winning five awards, including Best Picture. According to Israeli Academy rules, the winner of Best Picture automatically becomes Israel's official representative at the Oscars, in the Best International Feature Film category. It's hilarious! Upon seeing The Sea, Israeli Minister of Culture and Sports Miki Zohar jumped to his feet and announced a complete freeze on state funding for the Ophir Awards ceremony. The withdrawal of taxpayer funding is explicitly intended to punish the Israeli Film Academy for awarding Shai Carmeli-Pollak's work.
Miki Zohar accused the film of exclusively promoting the Palestinian narrative and of portraying IDF (Israel Defense Forces) soldiers in a "false and defamatory" manner. It "spits in the face of Israeli citizens and soldiers," he said, and it's true. On stage at the Ophir Awards, young actor Muhammad Gazawi, awarded for best performance, uttered these words: "I wish all children could live and dream without war." Of the dreams of Palestinian children, the Israeli minister knows only the blood of innocence in which the IDF thugs wallow. "You have always been killed in too few... we will spit on your graves until the end of time."
Of The Sea. Khaled is (as already mentioned) a twelve-year-old boy from Ramallah ("House of God")... his greatest desire is to see the sea, which is 50/60 kilometers from the city, less than an hour's journey... the occasion is a school trip that takes him to the beaches of the Mediterranean... at an Israeli military checkpoint, the soldiers declare his permit invalid and send him back, while his classmates continue on. The boy returns home... when the students return to Ramallah, they describe to Khaled the wonderful day spent on the beach... after a few days Khaled sets out to reach the sea... he doesn't know the way or speak Hebrew... he crosses the border clandestinely. His father, Ribhi (Khalifa Natour), is a precarious illegal immigrant who works as a bricklayer in Tel Aviv, who quits his job and risks arrest to search for his missing son. Khaled wanders the streets of the Israeli city in search of the sea. Khaled's gaze becomes a kind of mirror reflecting skyscrapers, shops, cars, and people living a daily life very different from that of Ramallah... young people roam freely around the city... tourists are completely indifferent to the cruelty of surveillance... the architecture of the occupation, the concrete barriers, the barbed wire, the armed soldiers in the streets... reveal inequalities and are based on identity and passport... Palestinians are enemies to be defeated and downgraded to criminals, even children... all the others, good citizens to be welcomed and perpetuate the racial discrimination of the Zionist government of Israel.
Khaled's father is a Palestinian worker without a valid permit. When his family learns that Khaled has fled to Israel, they set out in search of their son... he wanders the suburbs and streets of Tel Aviv, fearful that the police might stop and arrest him... after a long and desperate search, Ribhi spots his son almost by the sea... they are reunited, but there's not even time for a moment of affection... the police intervene and arrest them because they don't have documents. The final scene at the outdoor café is touching... Israeli customers, tourists, and the waitress pause for a moment to watch the father and son being pushed into the police car... as soon as the car drives away, people resume chatting as if nothing had happened and ordering cappuccinos... the director's visual metaphor highlights the normalization of apartheid and Israeli arrogance.
Khaled sees the sea only in a fleeting glimpse from the window of the police car. Shai Carmeli-Pollak's screenplay is extremely lean, and the filming of The Sea has an almost documentary-like sequentiality, a true road movie about the captivity of the Israeli government's disappearance policy. Shai Goldman's cinematography is crafted with the direct simplicity of film; the images are arranged like a family album, without frills or captivating artifice. Yosef Grunfeld's (or Joseph Greenfeld's) editing alternates linear narration with sudden accelerations, conveying the protagonist's bewilderment in a sort of metropolitan odyssey experienced by the boy, tied to his father's anguish. Avi Belleli's music unfolds in a perceptual fragmentation that suggests a spiritual closeness to the protagonists... a remarkable musical score that blends with the film's images... until the sensorial dissolution of the final sequence, when the police prevent the boy from seeing the sea. The Sea is a denunciation of the dehumanization of the Zionist Israeli government and asserts the universal right of childhood and a people to freedom.
Pino Bertelli
https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/wp-content/uploads/giugno2026_compressed-1.pdf
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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