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Director's Statement
The story of IT WASN’T THE RIGHT MOUNTAIN, MOHAMMAD was born out of two significant events, one is ancient and the other is recent. The ancient one happened approximately 3,800 years ago when God ordered Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. It was probably the biggest leaps of faith anyone has ever known. I, however, found the catharsis quite puzzling. Just as Abraham was about to sacrifice his son on the mount of Moriah, he was interrupted by the angel of the Lord, and saw a “ram caught in a thicket by his horns”. Abraham sacrificed the ram instead of his son. Everyone was allegedly happy with this ending, but I wondered - who was this ram? How did he get caught up in that situation? Or, as Paul Celan asked in his poem, “In-to what does he not charge?” And then he added: “The world is gone, I must carry you.” I wanted to tell the story of the last day in the life of that ram. But how...? In my films, I’ve always taken the approach of describing the world as I see it, through my own eyes. Therefore, I decided that the only way to be loyal to a certain truth, without imposing it on anybody, would be to imagine what could have happened to me back then, when God tested everyone’s faith on the mount of Moriah. I already knew how the story is going to end, but how does it start? The recent event, from which my film was developed, occurred while pondering about the biblical story:
My parents, who live by the sea in Israel, went to the beach for their morning run. They came across a plastic water bottle with a rolled letter inside. They opened it carefully and it was a letter written in Arabic, signed by a man named ‘Mohammad son of Sabah’, and addressed to God. Mohammad was thanking God, not asking for anything for himself. The faith and absurdity represented by this little event moved me deeply. I decided to start my journey at sea, and see how it goes from there. I will be the bottle, containing a letter back to Mohammad, and who knows who will find it? Could be God, but could also be a ridiculous hazard. Maybe both. This is more or less how IT WASN’T THE RIGHT MOUNTAIN, MOHAMMAD was born. It is a tale about the absurdity of faith, of the existence, and of nature. But it’s also a tale of beauty and love, and hope. I chose to tell this tale in a synthetic video game universe, since, after all, the 3D is not so far from the Bible. Both can express higher aspirations and give access to a stage of primary perception – of when we first met the world and found our place in it.