Eran Riklis grew up in Israel, the US, and Brazil. He studied cinema at Tel Aviv University and at the National Film School at Beaconsfield, England, and has directed numerous TV dramas and documentaries for Israeli television.

Riklis’ feature films include On a Clear Day You Can See Damascus, Cup Final, Zohar—the most successful Israeli film of the 1990s—and Vulcan Junction. His latest film is the award winning The Syrian Bride (Israel 2004/US, 2005), follows a Druze family in Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights on the wedding day of its youngest daughter, Mona.

The wedding, however, is anything but a simple affair. In order to wed her betrothed who resides in Damascus, Mona has to give up her Israeli residency and assume a Syrian identity. Once she crosses the border, she will be cut off forever from her family in the Golan. Mona and her family thus become victims of the Israel-Syria conflict.

Tikkun's Television/Film editor Shai Ginsburg spoke to Riklis in January. What transpired is a fascinating conversation with one of the Middle East's most important filmmakers.

TIKKUN: Why tell a story about the Druze community when there is such great interest in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? After all, the Golan Druze rarely show up in the news.

Riklis: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is obviously the heart of the matter, but it is also very difficult to treat. Because you are always competing with the news, there will always be something on the news stronger than what you’re doing. On the other hand, the story of the Druze in the Golan Heights provided a good way to reflect on the conflict. The film is specifically about the Druze and the situation in the Golan Heights but, in effect, is about the whole Israeli-Arab conflict and about situation in the Middle East. It’s like going far away in order to get closer. It was very convenient to go there and tell a story in which there was no pressure. This is why audiences have been more open-minded about the film. Since the story is about the Druze, it neutralizes emotions stirred by the bloody history of the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians, and one is able to see the story in itself, people as themselves.

TIKKUN: Many of your films focus on a conflict that is inherent to society at large in the Israel/Palestine, and actors are, personally, taking part in these conflicts. How do you guide actors in the shooting of scenes of such conflicts?

Riklis: I work with actors for a very long time in an attempt to achieve a certain kind of truth through a process. Then, even if the human being behind the character, behind the actor has all kinds of thoughts and opinions, these slowly disappear and he turns more and more into the character that he embodies. I don’t want symbols on the screen. I don’t want actors who think they represent the whole Palestinian nation or the whole Israeli nation. I want human beings. The process is, in this respect, therapeutic, designed to release the actors from the symbolism of the role. Little by little, you neutralize this, and you reach an understanding of the situation the character is caught in, a situation that you can treat without anger.

TIKKUN: Do you think this is a political film?

Riklis: First and foremost, this is a humane film. It deals with people who are caught inside politics, inside a political world. It’s a pro-people film. On the other hand, of course it contains political elements. In the Middle East in particular, almost everything that you do and refer to is political. Everything has consequences. Ultimately, however, the film does not come up with a statement; I was very careful. Part of the documentary feeling of the movie comes from the fact that it is democratic. It offers a picture. It doesn’t manipulate the viewer too much to think in this or that direction. It shows a situation: a family, with certain relationships, with drama inside it, with external drama, with a certain situation between Israel, Syria, and the Druze. It shows several options, and the viewer can choose which character to go wtih. From this perspective, it is not a political film in the old sense of films that tell you to think like this, to not think like that. This scared me. I did not want to create a movie that caused the viewer to think one-dimensionally.

The movie is as complex as life. In reality, things are always more complex than they seem, and so it is in the movie. Everything has multiple layers. Everything is related to everything else: personal relationships, social relationships and political relationships. Even the latter are multi-layered. There are local politics and international politics.

TIKKUN: What is the connection between the local and the international?

Riklis: I think that the more local the film is, the more international it is. For many years, cinema people believed that for a film to be clear and understood everywhere in the world, it had to be “universal.” There is, however, a line, difficult to define, where the local becomes universal. In my films, I try to impart a certain truth, to be fair, to create a true story, and to touch on emotional issues. Once you work with these elements, your work becomes universal. Every society deals with issues of tradition, of progress versus religion, of authoritarian fathers and family troubles, of troubles with the police. These are familiar elements, and everyone relates them to the place where they live. I make movies for people everywhere in the world. In this respect, I did not feel strange dealing with a story that is not from my immediate environment. Either you tell a true story or you do not.

TIKKUN: Do you see yourself as a political director?

Riklis: I see myself as a relevant director. I believe in movies that relate to political and social circumstances. I think it’s impossible, particularly in Israel, to say that what happens around you is of no interest to you, that you are an artist and that you make movies like the Americans do. In Israel, you have to acknowledge that you live in a very complex and problematic region. Therefore I try—not always successfully—to make films that relate to all these surrounding elements. I don’t think that I am a political director in the sense that I serve a political idea; I am more an observer than a messenger.

TIKKUN: When did you begin working on The Syrian Bride?

Riklis: In 1999 I made a documentary film titled Borders, a film about Israel’s borders. Among others, I shot a Druze wedding on the Israeli-Syrian border that, as in The Syrian Bride, ultimately did not take place because of bureaucratic and technical delays. The image of a bride in a white dress stuck at the border was fixed in my brain. I found that the story interested me and that I’d like to create a feature movie out of it. I got in touch with the Druze family, and began traveling to the Golan Heights, exploring the story and getting closer to the people. So the script took shape.

At one point I felt that because of the subject matter and because the focus of the script is a woman (the bride’s sister who was the heroine of the script), I needed to collaborate with someone. I got to Suha Arraf [The Syrian Bride’s co-author] accidentally, through a story in a newspaper. I felt that because she is an Arab, because she is a woman, and because she studied cinema and scriptwriting, she would be a winning combination to work with. I met with her and felt good with her. I believe she felt good with me, and the collaboration was great. It gave me things that I could not bring into the story, like nuances on the Arab world that, for that matter, seem similar to the Druze world, as well as nuances on the female perspective that were important for the story.

TIKKUN: Why focus on women?

Riklis: I felt the need to do so. But even more importantly, I felt that if I tell a story about the Druze community, where women have an inferior status and suffer from discrimination, it is socially and politically important to put a woman at the center of the story. I felt it would be right to tell a story about a Druze community and of such a wedding day from the perspective of a woman who looks, in effect, for freedom, who looks to release herself from what oppresses her—religion, tradition, etc.

TIKKUN: In the film, you focus on very minute details. It seems almost as if we’re watching a documentary.

Riklis: I think there is a very interesting tension in the movie. On the one hand, it is shot in cinemascope and it’s very cinematic. Sometimes it reminds me of a Western. There is something about the Golan Heights that is reminiscent of American Westerns. On the other hand, I think there is something in the style of acting and of cinematography that is ultimately very simple and that creates the sense of a documentary.

TIKKUN: Is there a character in the film to which you feel particularly close?

Riklis: Unlike my previous films, in this one each of the characters has something of me. Many viewers feel that the character of the wedding photographer is me. He observes the situation from the side, but he is also involved, in particular with the bride. Yet, I feel that all the characters have something of me.