“Shikun”, interview with director Amos Gitai

July 17, 2024

Amos Gitai: “as a Shikun is a collective housing of different people and languages, my film is about humanity which should be inclusive and in dialogue”

“Shikun”, interview with director Amos Gitai Chiara Nicoletti

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Israeli director Amos Gitai is back at the Taormina Film Fest after 25 years, with his new work “Shikun“.

At the 70th edition of the festival, directed from this year on by Marco Müller, Amos Gitai is introducing his film, which premiered last February at the Berlinale, to the italian audience.

Conceived and shot in Tel Aviv a while before the events of October 7th, 2024, “Shikun” in hebrew means collective housing as the film is set there, a sort of refugee building giving shelter to anyone asking for help: Israelis, Palestinians, Ukrainians

The inspiration for the film comes from Eugène Ionesco’s play “Rhinoceros“, an anti-totalitarian fable the Romanian author wrote at the end of the 50’s.

Ionesco’s words felt so contemporary to address what’s happening in his country but also in the world that Gitai asked Irene Jacob who, at the time was busy in Paris in a play based on Gitai’s own work, to come back to Tel Aviv and shot the film.

Plot

A diverse cross-section of Israeli society converges in a single multi-use building, the Shikun. As people of different languages, origins, and generations come together in highly theatrical encounters, they grapple with the current state of affairs. In a poignant metaphor inspired from Eugene Ionesco’s famous play Rhinoceros, some begin to turn into rhinoceroses, while others resist.

Written by: Chiara Nicoletti

Guest

Amos Gitai

Film

Shikun

Festival

Taormina Film Fest

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“Shikun”, interview with director Amos Gitai

Amos Gitai: “as a Shikun is a collective housing of different people and languages, my film is about humanity which should be inclusive and in dialogue”

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