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Director's Statement
We first met Lea 25 years ago. By then, the once anonymous firebrand law student who, after the 1967 war, had fearlessly distributed flyers on campus warning her fellow Israelis to end the occupation or risk a vicious cycle of violence — was already a household name. For us, socially and politically engaged filmmakers, her rebellious spirit and radical zeal were an inspiration. But we could never do what Lea does; most people couldn’t. In her life, as in her work, Lea straddles an incredible divide. On the one hand, she’s the little boy calling the Emperor naked, i.e. naming the system’s most fundamental fault: the occupier is judging the occupied. On the other hand, she’s the boy with his finger in the dam, doing her utmost to uphold the rule-of-law before the flood of injustice drowns us all. As one military court judge once put it: “If Lea Tsemel didn’t exist, we’d have to invent her.”
Lea spoke truth to power before the term became popular and she’ll continue to do so after fear makes it fashionable. As such, she is a model we’re hard-pressed to preserve, in Israel and elsewhere. Lea, who has spent a lifetime going against the grain of Israeli society, is as much a product of it as she is an exception to it. Through her, we tell another kind of Israeli history, without a capital H. Not the usual: “We came, we saw, we conquered, we shot, we cried.” More like: “We cooked, we cleaned, we cursed, we tried to better the world, but didn’t always manage ...” Unlike the seminal works of recent years (THE LAW IN THESE PARTS, THE GATEKEEPERS, CENSORED VOICES), this is a female-centred story. Lea is almost always the only woman, or the only leftist, or the only Jew — in the room.
For the past two decades, we’ve watched Lea work with a mixture of awe and admiration, marvelling at the fact that interrogators still infuriate her, prosecutors still madden her, judges still frustrate her, verdicts still disappoint her — and clients still break her heart. If we do our job right, yours will break too.