I chose to incarnate the story of Tsili, using three female protagonists: two actresses, Sarah and Meshi, of different ages, and one female voice, the one of Lea Koenig. As if this generation of young women survivors, abused by the Holocaust, had big holes in their biographies. As if the years of youth and pleasure were missing and never be given back to them. The film was shot in Yiddish, the language of the European Diaspora.
I was inspired by what Aharon Appelfeld told Philip Roth :
''The reality of the Holocaust surpassed any imagination. If I remained true to the facts, no one would believe me. But the moment I chose a girl, a little older than I was at that time, I removed ''the story of my life'' from the mighty grip of memory and gave it over to the creative laboratory. There memory is not the only proprietor. There one needs a causal explanation, a thread to tie things together. The exceptional is permissible only if it is part of an overall structure and contributes to its understanding.
When I wrote ''Tsili'' I was interested in the possibilities of naiveness in art. Can there be a naive modern art? It seemed to me that without the naivete still found among children and old people and, to some extent, in ourselves, the work of art would be flawed. I tried to correct that flaw. ''
Amos Gitai