How I Learned to Overcome My Fear and Love Ariel Sharon

After the collapse of the Oslo Agreements ( hastened by the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin), the Israeli filmmaker Avi Mograbi sets out to wage war (or so he thinks) against his arch-enemy, Ariel Sharon, at the time campaigning for the Likud in the general elections.

“If someone asked me for a synopsis of the film, I wouldn’t say ‘It’s a film about a politician called Ariel Sharon…’ Instead, I’d say ‘It’s a film about a guy who’s trying to make a film against Ariel Sharon and whom, during the film, this old gentleman wins over to his cause. He loses all his bearings and even ends up becoming a Likud activist.’”…The shoot taught me that Sharon can be extremely seductive – if you forget the blood on his hands, the horrible things he did to people in the Middle East with war and the dreadful legacy that his policy left them. The truth is, I have never forgotten those things. But, for the first time, I took stock of his charisma…Watching close up the magnetism that he exudes, I understood the subject of the films I was making: how someone seduced by the magnetism of a strong personality abandons his political and ethical convictions.”
Avi Mograbi (Mon occupation préférée, interviews with Eugenio Renzi, Les Prairies ordinaires, 2015)