LE MONDE'S OPINION – NOT TO BE MISSED

Trans women in the night of Tel Aviv. Demigoddesses with sculpted bodies, twirling on their heels in the glare of headlights. It could be that one of them, Nathalie, made her way from Gaza. That may be a legend, but it makes for a film burning with light: La Belle de Gaza (The Belle from Gaza), by Yolande Zauberman, shot before the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023. The documentary was presented in a special screening at the Cannes Film Festival on May 22.

This documentary on a tightrope closes the trilogy of the night begun with Would You Have Sex ? (2011) and the multi-award-winning M (2018), the story of a man who as a child was the victim of sexual predators in the ultra-Orthodox community of Bnei Brak, on the outskirts of Tel Aviv (César award for Best Documentary in 2020).

For several years, the filmmaker had been searching for that woman, spotted during the filming of M. At the time, she almost accidentally filmed two girls running away from her on Hatnufa Street, a place of prostitution where drivers keep their windows down. The filmmaker's companion, Selim Nassib, who was in charge of sound and speaks Arabic, spoke to them before telling Zauberman: "You know that one of them came from Gaza? La Belle de Gaza was born, like a myth, even before it became a film. The director, in voice-over, asks the same question over and over again, with photos, as she meets people: "I'm looking for this woman, they say she's from Gaza, do you know her?"

The same device is at work as in Would You Have Sex with an Arab?, in which Zauberman asked a group of Tel Aviv revelers if they could have a relationship with a Palestinian. The answers vary ("Yes, of course" or "Just for one night, but not marriage.") and, through these, a whole range of reflections on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict emerged. An Israeli woman recounted the incredible feeling of her first relationship with her former Palestinian lover. The feeling of making peace, she said. “The conflict won't be resolved in bed,” said actor, director and producer Juliano Mer-Khamis, who was shot dead in April 2011, at the age of 52, in front of the Freedom Theatre he co-founded in the Jenin refugee camp. Would You Have Sex with an Arab? is dedicated to him.

In La Belle de Gaza, Zauberman leads an investigation from a nightclub to dark places in the street where sex workers try to make a living. The filmmaker, who holds the camera and films from a distance, illuminates the night, bringing out of the darkness, like flashes, these heroic naked bodies, exposed to danger. While searching for "the Belle," she paints a portrait of other trans women with different destinies, in off-the-cuff conversations about their experiences, their relationships with their families, the question of sexual pleasure and so on.

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