Synopsis
Filmmaker Danae Elon began to film her three young sons as soon as she and her partner Philip decided to leave New York and return to Jerusalem. The decision was prompted by the death of her father, leading Israeli intellectual and writer Amos Elon. It was his dying wish that Danae not return, but her attachment to the place she always called home was stronger. On a journey back Danae’s camera captures her three young boys growing up, asking endless questions and confronting the reality around them. The place she once saw as “home” challenges her relationship with her partner and the future of her kids. It is through the prism of parenthood, children and a family that the story of this film exposes a deep, complex and painful portrait of Jerusalem today.
A word from Tënk
“I became a filmmaker because I always felt that when I film, it gives me a feeling of protection, recording an injustice. As if the very act of filming it, absolves me from being part of it.”
The film's origins lie in a promise broken when Danae Elon, against her father's wishes, who had left Israel in disgust at the fate of the Palestinians, moved back to Jerusalem with her family just as she was about to give birth to her third son. The latter would bear the same name as his grandfather, the Jewish intellectual Amos Elon. "Our relationship was political", says the filmmaker of her relationship with this imposing figure of the Israeli left. This phrase also sheds light on her relationship with her three sons and her husband Philippe. From then on, in a quest at the confluence of the intimate and the political, Elon filmed for three years - and right up to the brink of breaking up - the life of her family, their past and their hopes, their heartbreaks and contradictions, which turn out to be echoed in the country itself, born of a broken promise - "Never again!"
Frédérick Pelletier
Filmmaker and programmer
