POURQUOI ISRAEL

As a journalist, Claude Lanzmann’s specialty became in-depth interviews, and his first documentary Pourquoi Israël offers a collection of viewpoints by many people he met during his visit to Israel. Filmed 25 years after the creation of the state, the film underlines the accomplishments and contradictions of the Israeli nation, linking Jewish identity in Israel to the history of the Holocaust. Lanzmann focused on the questions of normality and abnormality, spending time with German-Jewish emigrants, with people of different backgrounds and social status, as well as observing the newly arrived in this new homeland.