Acclaimed filmmaker Michael Winterbottom says our “complicated” British colonial history over Palestine needs to be better understood when it comes to realising “our responsibility” for current events in Israel.
Speaking exclusively to Sky News about his new political thriller Shoshana – set in Tel Aviv in the 1930s during Britain’s unwanted occupation of Palestine – Winterbottom says unless we “understand what we’ve done in the past” then “maybe we can’t understand what’s happening now”.
“The British role in Palestine is complicated, obviously the whole issue of Palestine is complicated, but I don’t think it helps anyone to ignore history….especially when that history is something that is still very active and alive today, it has huge direct consequences.”
While it has taken 15 years for Winterbottom to bring his new film to the big screen, in the last week its subject matter has become all the more timely.
Its premiere at the London Film Festival came as details of the brutal attacks against Israel first emerged.
For some of the film’s Israeli cast members who’d flown over for the red carpet event, Winterbottom says it was “a strange moment” to be showing the film.
“They spent the whole day on their phones,” Winterbottom said.
“It’s terrible what’s happening… unfortunately, I don’t think anyone would pretend to have an idea of how to improve the situation right now.”
The film is both a love story based on real events and a story of political radicalisation.
The British mandate to govern Palestine began during First World War One after British troops drove out soldiers from the Ottoman Empire.
By 1938, when the film is set, tensions in Tel Aviv were running high as the British struggled to maintain order among the population.
Douglas Booth and Michael Winterbottom at the ‘Shoshana’ screening at the London Film Festival
“We should particularly look at the bits of history that are contested, the bits of history that are difficult,” Winterbottom said.
“It’s important for us to understand our role in creating the situation in the Middle East in a specific way, but also more generally because we went into Palestine during the First World War and we just decided we had the right to carve up the Middle East between the French, the British – we made all the countries that now exist.
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“We created all of the boundaries, decided we could control Palestine, we could control Jordan, the French could control Syria and what right did we have here? If we don’t understand what we’ve done in the past then maybe we can’t understand what’s happening now.
There are, for Winterbottom, echoes back then of the more recent American and British experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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“I hope it raises the question of why do we think we have the right to go with our army into other countries and tell people how they should live?
“Almost always, I think, that’s a bad idea.”
While he says there is “unfortunately” no obvious lesson to be taken from the time covered in the film, given the unfolding war, Winterbottom maintains that grasping the history is vital.
“It’s obviously an incredibly difficult situation, I don’t think anyone knows what to do,” Winterbottom said.
“If you understand what’s happened in the past, you have a better chance of understanding what’s happening now.”
Shoshana premiered at the London Film Festival and is due out next year.
