Promised Land

2004 | Fiction | Runtime 90' | 35 mm | Colour

DVD/Video

Terre promise
1 DVD PAL Zone 2
MK2 (France)
Subtitles: French
Kippur / Berlin-Jerusalem / Esther / Kedma / Promised Land
4 DVD PAL Zone 2
Globus United (Israel)
Promised Land
1 DVD PAL Zone 2
Globus United (Israel)

World sales / Distribution

World sales
HanWay Films
24 Hanway Street
London W1T 1UH
UK
Tel.: +44 (0)20 7290 0750
Fax: +44 (0)20 7290 0751
E-mail: info@hanwayfilms.com
Web: www.hanwayfilms.com

France
Ad Vitam Distribution
6, rue de l'Ecole de Médecine
75006 Paris
France
Tel.: +33 (0)1 46 34 75 74
Fax: +33 (0)1 46 34 75 09
E-mail: contact@advitamdistribution.com
Web: www.advitamdistribution.com

A night in the Sinai desert. A group of men and women keep warm around a camp fire under the moonlight. The women come from Eastern Europe. The men, who normally walk their herds in the area, are Bedouins. Tomorrow, they will secretly cross the border. Tomorrow, Diana and the others will be beaten, raped and auctioned off. They will be passed from one hand to another, merchandised by Anne into Hanna's hostess club, victims of an international network of trafficking women. One night in the club, Diana meets Rose. Their encounter is a sign of hope into the women's descend into hell.

"Promised Land is a stunningly audacious movie, for political reasons as well as for the asthetical choices made. Gitai solves the problem of representing the ordeal, the nakedness and the descent into hell of these young women in an exemplary way. There are such films where the movie maker pretending to expose a situation, instead give way to voyeurism. Not so in this film; the eye of the director does never debase the actresses' bodies. Amos Gitai's concern for oppressed women goes a long way back in time (Bangkok-Bahrain, Kadosh). Promised Land questions the notion of territoriality (the traffickers speak all kinds of languages: Arab, French, Russian, Hebrew). Gitai depicts Israel as a huge capitalist brothel in the age of globalization. The reprensentation of enslaved bodies turned into a merchandise and contemptuously transported across borders and through checkpoints, appears as a metaphor of the way a scornful economic system conquers the world."
Jean-Luc Douin, Le Monde, January 12th, 2005

Cast Rosamund Pike, Diana Bespechni, Hanna Schygulla, Anne Parillaud, Kristina Likhnyski, Katya Drabkin, Alla An, Yussuf Abu Warda, Shalva Ben Moshe Screenplay Amos Gitai, Marie-José Sanselme Cinematography Caroline Champetier Sound Daniel Ollivier, Oleg Kaiserman, Alex Claude, Stéphane Thiébaut Music Simon Stockhausen Editing Isabelle Ingold Production design Eli Zion Costumes Laura Dinulescu Casting Ilan Moscovitch Production Agav Hafakot (Israel), Hamon Hafakot (Israel), Recorded Picture Company (UK), MP Productions (France) Producer(s) Amos Gitai, Michaël Tapuach, Laurent Truchot Executive producer(s) Jeremy Thomas, Michel Propper

Festivals
Venice : Biennale di Venezia / Mostra d'arte cinematografica 2004 - In competition