Edna Politi: Anou Banou or the Daughters of Utopia (Anou Banou ou les filles de l’utopie)

Anou Banou or the Daughters of Utopia (Anou Banou ou les filles de l’utopie), Edna Politi, 84’, FRG, ZDF 18.10.1983, OV with German subtitles

In 1981, Edna Politi makes a film about the role of women in Israel. While the pioneering women still took part in the struggle for a new society in which they expected the right to work, autonomy and equality, the establishment of the state turns women’s liberation into a myth that contradicts lived reality. The ZDF directorate is worried as there is no script for the film. The filmmaker comments in the film: “While I was filming these pioneering women, I wanted maybe to recapture the time when everything still seemed possible. But perhaps it was all just a dream? Perhaps even then, unbeknownst to them, the threads had begun to tangle?” Politi picks up the threads and finds words where all too often there is silence.

Edna Politi (*1948) is a filmmaker and author born in Lebanon, who later emigrated to Israel and then to Europe, where she studied in Berlin among other places. Today she lives in Geneva, her documentaries and film portraits have been screened and awarded many times. With Das kleine Fernsehspiel, she made the feature film Like the Sea and its Waves (1980) and the documentary Anou Banou or the Daughters of Utopia (1983). For the Palestinians – An Israeli reports (1975) was screened in the Berlinale Forum.