Danae Elon
Danae Elon, was born in 1970. She grew up between Italy and Israel as the only child of Beth and Amos Elon. When Amos Elon was writing his biography on Theodor Herzl he relocated the family to a small farmhouse in Italy where Danae was cared for by the local nuns. Later she attended the village school in Italy. In third grade she returned to Jerusalem where she continued her education in Hebrew. The transition was devastating; to her parents’ disbelief the prestigious Gymnasia secondary school in Jerusalem ultimately told them that their daughter had an unpromising capacity for intellectual learning and suggested she attend one of the many technical schools in the city. She was “saved” by a new experimental school for the arts that had just opened in Jerusalem. Some of the leading filmmakers in Israel who were unemployed at the time were teaching there. Upon graduating from high school Danae spent two years in compulsory military service as a non-commissioned officer to the United Nation forces in the area. At age 21 Danae left Israel to study at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She lived in New York for 15 years where she met her partner Philip Touitou.

Director's statement
“I pray for the day when I will stop cringing about my nationality. The day I will feel proud to say I am from Israel. I wanted to make a film about the “occupiers” about the jail in which the Zionist narrative of Israel has mentally and emotionally imprisoned both Israelis and Jews. I wanted to make a film that would reflect the impossible contradictions of being born in Israel to a liberal Jewish family. I did not want to tell my story through the experience of Palestinians, nor tell another story of the occupation, I rather focused on how Israel’s narrative imprisoned my own identity. The characters in the film all represent an amplification of my voice. I use my camera to capture the complex fabric of daily life, one which express my single complete voice. My voice is my family and those I love and care for. […] The “Jewish homeland” was never organic to our family experience - it was a choice. I was born into that choice and my father, was led there by his parents when escaping Europe. We believed in Peace yet lived in Arab homes deserted in 1948, we believed in co-existence yet never learned the language of the other. This very premise led to a basketful of contradictions that were to simultaneously exist within our daily lives. One people’s tragedy created the other people’s tragedy. These were not two stories but one”.