Director Shooting Film About Anne Frank – in Gaza
by Dave Bender
In a story that wildly veers somewhere between the absurd and obscene, a Croatian filmmaker has been shooting footage about Holocaust victim, Anne Frank, in the bombed out streets of Gaza, Israel’s Channel 2 News reported Tuesday.
The film crew wandered between outgoing rocket fire towards Israel, and resulting Israeli Air Force counter-strikes during the IDF’s current Operation Protective Edge, as actors intoned on-camera monologues about the need for peace and the absurdity of war.
“Only a small part of the Palestinian team who worked with me on the film had heard about Anne Frank or the Holocaust,” he said. “This was the first time they realized that the Jews were once victims who were killed and exiled from their homes. Until then they only saw Israeli soldiers and aggressiveness.”
“One day, the soundman came up to me and said ‘I am very disappointed that the Jews, who suffered during World War II, are destroying Gaza and killing civilians,” the director revealed.
“It was absurd to see these pictures from afar,” he says, “A bunch of actors talking to the camera, while behind them people with gas masks are running in and out of the frame. None of it was planned, but it only adds to the feeling of the impossible reality of this film,” Sadler said.