“Gitai transforms small fragments of history into a daunting but striking artistic achievement, a sensory experience that demonstrates the power of art as not only a means of escapism, but as arguably one of the most powerful tools to inspire action.”

If you were to travel between the historical cities of Jerusalem and Jericho, you might be surprised to find that there’s only about forty kilometres separating them, which seems staggering considering how disparate they are in terms of their place in the cultural conversation. To make this journey is fascinating, even if done from a distance, as shown by Amos Gitai, who sets out to explore the region through the physical movement between these two cities, and also through its history. His particular focus is on the Bedouin community that considered the small village of Khan al-Ahmar (located on this road) their home over the centuries, now called into question as a result of the ongoing violent occupation of the region, which has caused attempted evictions of the residents countless times, with their ironclad determination not to be conquered providing fertile ground for this engaging conversation. The Road to Jericho‘s audacious premise takes the space between the two locations and explores the various stories that have taken place on this road (both physical and metaphorical) over thousands of years, resulting in a fascinating deconstruction of the past by a filmmaker who has always been actively invested in exploring different aspects of society and how it functions. Here he uses the displacement of the Bedouin people as one manifestation of larger and more worrying historical patterns that resonate not only in terms of the current ongoing conflict in the Middle East but also far more widely, creating a film that is as much about the destination as it is the journey to get there.

We have an innate tendency to view history as exactly that: events safely contained in the past, set aside and considered nothing but static representations of days gone by. However, this is an obviously hollow and one-dimensional view, since there is always something to learn from reflecting on the path to the present moment – and in many cases, we realise that the events we always viewed as self-contained narratives are actually far more dynamic, the landscapes on which these stories took place still existing as living archives. The tensions between the past and present are very much present in The Road to Jericho, which argues (or rather acknowledges, since anyone who has been paying attention to the world around them knows this to be true) that the conflicts that took place centuries ago are connected to those that we still see occurring. The only difference is the weapons used, whether tangible or more metaphorical (this film takes note of people who “fight wars with their minds”), and the injustices against entire populations remain as harrowing as they were in the past. Khan al-Ahmar is a small village that serves as home to only a few hundred people at a time, yet it becomes the source of some captivating and often heartbreaking conversation around the occupation of the West Bank or the ongoing genocide and how it has its roots in centuries of conflict. This is not a subject that Gitai takes lightly by any means, which forms the foundation for this haunting and evocative voyage into the collective trauma that has shaped generations of people who continue to fight for their own survival, while exemplifying the resilience of the human spirit in times of enormous suffering and despair.

There certainly were many angles from which the director could explore these themes, and his approach was to make a film that defies categorisation at every opportunity. Pinpointing the right description for The Road to Jericho is a challenge, since it exists somewhere between a historical documentary, a visual poem and an essay, each equally vital to establishing the core conversations that guide the story. Some may consider an attempt to explore the history of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in an artistic manner inappropriate, since we don’t often find such circumstances to be conducive to creativity. However, Gitai proves this is not the case, working from the belief that art is a meaningful and essential tool that can confront the oppressive aspects of history more directly than a conventional conversation. The Road to Jericho is composed of different media, combining archival footage, historical images, literary excerpts (read by the likes of Samuel Fuller, Jeanne Moreau and a range of others) and segments from existing films (mainly by the director himself). All these elements are pieced together in a way that is not at all chronological or logical at first, but which eventually forms a fascinating mosaic, in which each fragment adds a new layer of meaning to these seemingly disconnected pieces, some including explanations and others existing without clear context. The juxtaposition of disparate images drawn from numerous sources allows Gitai the chance to explore the act of reconstructing meaning, particularly in the relationship between the past and the present, using existing material to say something quite new and proving that the past (like these segments of existing works) can always be recontextualised and challenged, rather than remaining stagnant. It’s demanding and invigorating filmmaking that foregoes simplicity in favour of something far more intriguing, both narratively and structurally.

Condensing thousands of years of history into only 75 minutes, and presenting it as a metaphysical journey between two cities divided by only a few dozen kilometres, is an ambitious and intriguing premise that immediately makes The Road to Jericho one of the year’s most fascinating works. It certainly requires focus and dedication from the audience, since this is not a film that facilitates passive viewing; we have to be actively drawing connections between different fragments, each with a deeper meaning that reflects the core themes of memory, displacement and the fact that history has a tendency to repeat itself in often harrowing ways. Gitai makes it clear that he, like many other socially conscious filmmakers who use their craft to protest against injustices, does not have a solution, especially not one that can be delivered in only 75 minutes, a shockingly brief amount of time to spend on a subject that stretches back thousands of years. Instead, he uses this space as an opportunity to ask questions and provoke conversation around an ongoing crisis that only becomes more complicated as it goes on. Through a dynamic cinematic collage in which he draws from numerous sources to prove how the past (across different media) can influence how we understand the present, Gitai transforms small fragments of history into a daunting but striking artistic achievement, a sensory experience that demonstrates the power of art as not only a means of escapism, but as arguably one of the most powerful tools to inspire action and draw awareness to an oppressive and brutal regime, in the hopes of eventually finding peace and common humanity.