Chapo Trap House - BONUS: Will Goes to the Mayor feat. David Osit

Episode Date: January 21, 2021

Will talks to David Osit, director of the acclaimed new documentary "Mayor,” a film about Musa Hadid, the charismatic mayor of Ramallah and the farcical Ianucci-like conditions that face municipal government under foreign military occupation. https://www.mayorfilm.com/

Okay, hello everybody. Welcome to this bonus episode, where on today I am very excited to be talking to the filmmaker David Osset, who is the director of the new documentary Mayor, which is a portrait of the mayor of the city of Ramallah, the West Bank City. I guess I'll just start by saying, if I could describe this movie to someone who's wondering about seeing it, I would say it's probably the funniest movie ever made about the sort of twin comedic goldmine subjects of municipal government and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. I was just wondering, like, how aware were you starting out this project and filming it about these sort of very black comedic aspects of it?

Thanks, yeah. You know, when I first conceived of the idea, I think I was expecting that the film could be funny because I think that local government is funny and bureaucracy is funny, or rather, it's rife with humor. And I would think a lot. I mean, I'm a big fan of Armando Ioannucci's work and Veep. And I remember hearing him talk once about what he thought satire was. And he said something like, that satire works when there's a series of accepted conventions. And you point out when people are departing from those conventions. And I feel like bureaucracy has so many, and local government has so many built-in conventions that when those bubbles break, as they often do when you're dealing with an occupied country

or dealing with a city that doesn't have a country such as Ramallah in Palestine, there were so many opportunities to use humor, black comedy to actually highlight the horrific elements of occupation, even more so. I feel like, typically, the way occupation is depicted or the way films about this part of the world are showing their stories is through the lens of, you know, you should care because of these atrocities that are happening. But I wanted to see if I could reverse the formula a little bit and reverse the formula a little bit and try to make it more oriented around, well, this is like maybe your home in some ways except that there are tanks on the fringes of town and there's tear gas exploding around

you and trying to just give some, essentially, some Western relativity or relativity to a place that doesn't often receive it in media treatment. I mean, you bring up Armando Iannucci and anyone who has seen either Veep or the thick of it will recognize that you capture, like, many real-life moments unscripted that seem that they are, like, straight out of one of those shows. I mean, like, the very first scene in the movie is a city council meeting in which they are basically batting around ideas about how to brand the city of Ramallah. And a lot of it deals with, like, their sort of the slogan or sort of like a big sign they have everywhere that just says, we, Ramallah,

but the R is a different color. So it's supposed to read, we are Ramallah, but nobody really seems to, like, be catching on to that or it's not popping the way they hoped it would. And then they start talking about, like, well, what are the things that people, like, you know, the Minnesota is the, you know, land of 10,000 lakes. Like, what's the thing about Ramallah that's totally specific to us and the ideas they come up with are traffic lights, sidewalks and trees? Yeah. I mean, I think it's funny because, you know, that we Ramallah thing is kind of borrowed from the Amsterdam branding. And there's a couple moments where you, when you're

walking around downtown Ramallah, you can actually kind of, if you squint, you can feel as though you're in some sort of trendy European style capital city in that there are, you know, there's hipster bars everywhere. There's free unlimited public Wi-Fi. There's a Jaguar dealership. It's historically a Christian city. So there's, you know, there's plenty of bars. There's, you know, you can buy alcohol in many places. There's Christmas decorations, obviously. And that's a big theme throughout the film is that it takes place between two Christmas times. I think of it as a kind of a Christmas movie, actually, which is one of the reasons we wanted to add it to the canon.

Exactly. Yeah. And I mean, part of all that is, is, is there's actually kind of a deeper tragedy in a sense buried underneath that, which is that Ramallah and Musa as the mayor of Ramallah, Musa Hadid, who's a Christian man in his mid fifties, who's a very charismatic guy, and he's really, you know, charming and funny. And he's a really great leader in all these ways. But there's also this kind of performance of respectability for the West that's happening when you see the way the city is, is, is looking so friendly and having these English slogans. And I don't think that that's the fault of anyone. And that's not certainly something that I would indict the municipality of Ramallah for doing. It's that

this is the way in which, you know, people from the global south are kind of expected to represent themselves to the rest of the world. And certainly in a place like Palestine that is seen in such a monolithic way as a land of victims or a land of terrorists, that it almost makes sense as to why if someone's coming in to Ramallah saying, well, how can we make this city look friendlier that we try to basically make it look like a more, more Western friendly? And you see a lot of that in the city. And so the film kind of begins with with these almost kind of quirky representations. But as you go through the story of the movie, they take on a more sinister meaning and a darker truth, which is true

of a lot of other elements of the way the film represents the city of Ramallah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so you brought him up, your subject, Musa Hadid, who is the mayor of Ramallah. And I'm just wondering, how did you come? How did you sort of discover this guy? And how did you decide that he was going to be the subject of your film? Well, you know, I've been working in the Middle East off and on for about a decade. And I was actually studying in Cairo. I was going to I was studying refugee law before I got into filmmaking. So I visited Ramallah a couple of times. And then eventually I got into filmmaking and I was editing a documentary by a Palestinian filmmaker. And that film was called Off Frame.

This is like four years ago. So I went to work on the edit and it had been years since I've been back and I was I was blown away by how much the city had changed and that all of a sudden it seemed like there were all these things I was just mentioning these bars and and this nightlife and all these things. And I kind of just filed it away. But but when Mahana, the director of that film came to New York and we and where I live and we screened the film, he was staying with me. And I just asked him one night, what's the mayor like out of curiosity? And he was telling me like he's this is super charismatic guy, you always see him walking around town with his e-cigarette and and everyone likes him. And I think this

sort of home alone style light bulb went off above my head thinking, well, I really, really want to know what his job is like. And I think for me, also, the films I make are more so compelled by questions I have than things I want to explicitly say. I have my own personal political beliefs and convictions, obviously. But I don't find engaging films that I don't find films engaging that are essentially just made to tell you what I already know or what you already know. I felt like I could go on this journey of discovering an answer to this really central question to me, which was how do you run a city when you don't have a country? How do you run a city in the shadow of the occupation of Palestine? And because I didn't

know the answer to that question, I knew that making a film about it would be the best way I could answer it. I mean, what comes across about Mayor Musa is that he's very much a business first and by business, I mean like constituent services before a political agenda. But I'm wondering like, as he ran for mayor, the film begins as I think he's starting his second term in office. But what is his political party and what was his agenda as a candidate for this office? I didn't know him when he was running for office. So there's term limits. So he's in

his second and final term. And I met him after he would already been elected. So I wasn't privy to his campaigning. He is in the FETA political party, which is the dominant party of the West Bank. And Ramallah is not the capital of Palestine, but it is the de facto capital of Palestine. And that is the headquarters of the Palestinian authority, which is dominantly FETA, that is the political party of Yasser Arafat and so on. But I knew that he, and I see just based on the way that he governs is that he's interested in development. He's interested in helping Ramallah's capital and helping Ramallah's ability to attract investment and attract foreign interest and also, you know, providing

a green space and providing parks and making it easier for people to get property and to own lands. And Ramallah, he's oriented around economic development in a way that would probably place him towards center left in Palestinian politics. And there's a, for folks who don't know, there is a very, very strong history of far left wing movements in Palestine. And he wouldn't necessarily be one of those politicians, but he's also not, not quite as conservative as the sort of Middle Eastern politicians who hear about on the news almost exclusively. And now, I mean, like, like he's the main character, but, you know, as the cliche goes, the city of Ramallah is also a character. And you mentioned it's sort of the de facto

political and cultural capital of Palestine. And, you know, like you mentioned it before, but, you know, in a lot of ways it is sort of like every other city in the world, except for one specific way in which it's completely different, which is sort of what the entire movie is about, that it's just, you're trying to do the business of like, you know, installing park benches or making sure that the city hall fountain works properly. But it is in a city that is in a state of basically permanent siege from both settlements and the Israeli military, which facilitates that project of colonization and settlement. And I mean, like, it just, like, how does that, like, I mean, it underlines just about everything

that happens in this movie in terms of like portraying a city that is just a normal city, but not. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's fundamental to the story of the film in that, and it's certainly in the way the film set up, I kind of inviting an audience in the first five minutes to wonder them to themselves, like, where the hell am I? Like, this doesn't look like the Middle East. This doesn't look like what I imagined the Middle East would look like. And in part that is because the experience I had when I went, when I went back after several years, I still was amazed that I was amazed and surprised that I was surprised by how much the city had changed. And the main thing was, you know, I'm looking at myself

thinking, okay, I, you know, I have a degree in Middle Eastern and North African studies, I've spent many years traveling in and around the Middle East, I speak Arabic to a degree, like I, yet, because the discourse and the political and social way in which this part of the world is depicted in the media in the West creates, like I said, this monolithic idea of what Palestine is. So I really wanted to let the film feel like you're not watching a film about the Middle Eastern conflicts, you're not watching a film about, quote, Israel, Palestine, you're watching a film that you don't need a history degree to understand because you're watching a mayor trying to do his job. And this is the job that he has

to do. And this is what's so fraught about it. So I wanted to make a small story. And I feel like a lot of documentaries that I see a when they're dealing with this part of the world, they're tending to kind of frame it in such a simplistic way, at least frame Palestinians and such a simplistic way that they're either victims or terrorists, like I was talking about before, yet Israeli characters kind of get to be complicated. And you'll see lots of films made. And I'm not saying these films are bad, but, but, but you'll see a lot of films also by Israeli filmmakers where a lot of Israelis are kind of reckoning with their complex feelings of guilt and shame about the occupation. And even in those films,

Palestinians are kind of relegated to background figurines of sort of just like they're, they just happen to be there. Yet the Israelis are the, you know, the ones who are dealing with the reckoning and all the complex human emotions. And I wanted to just make a film that was there was a smaller world that didn't try to challenge you on who's right or who's wrong, even though I have my own personal beliefs on on that. I feel I feel like the emotional understanding of this part of the world is often left unexplored due to this need that a lot of films have, especially documentaries to educate. And I felt like an emotional education was going to be more valuable than a literal one.

Yeah, because, you know, in your main character and Mayor Musa, like you said, like all of those issues that you talk about and the reckoning and like the very complex and and fraud and very painful feelings of like living under occupation or certainly present. But like in front of all of that is just him being a regular guy, like he gets to be funny and kind of beleaguered and just sort of like a put upon local municipal figure, just dealing with the I mean, he's often just sort of just collapses in a chair, hitting his e-cigarette and he's just like, we're doomed. Like this is bullshit. I can't deal with this anymore. Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's he's, you know, the film's called Mayor in part

because it's not really it's not a film where I'm telling you that this guy is a hero necessarily. I'm not saying that he is the most unique person on the planet. He's he's if he didn't have this job, someone else would have this job, which is something that he was always fond of saying is, you know, he doesn't own the office of mayor, he's just there for now. And I really appreciated this sort of every man workman quality to his character. And as a result of that, I felt like he was actually going to be more prone to a more cinematic representation kind of like you would see in the Golden Age of Hollywood. And I'm kind of filming him in this way that reminds me at least of like a Gary Cooper character or

a Jacques Taty character, you know, the film's a wide screen and and there's a lot of really still shots. And I did the cinematography. And I was thinking really conscientiously about, again, how can I make this film feel different than other films you've seen in this part of the world? And so I had a lot of rules that I would set for myself at the beginning of this production. And especially one of which being like, you know, I'm not going to move the camera around so much, I'm not going to do that shaky handheld there. But for the grace of God, sort of feeling that you have when you watch films in this part of the world, where you feel like you feel like a journalist just parachuted into

a war zone, and it just happens to be filming everything or they're running, they're running all the time, the cameras shaking, right? And I, and I, it's crazy. Exactly. And I didn't want that to be the rules of the movie. Yeah, exactly. I didn't want the I didn't want the film to be defined. And for the film's energy to come from scenes of violence, because that's not what prior, that's not that's not the reason that we should care necessarily. And so I saw the challenge was cinematically, how do how do you know how do I make a film where you get invested in like the minutiae of local government. And what happens, I think over the course of the film is in the first 20 minutes, you have a very different feeling

about these things you're seeing, like planning a flash mob for Christmas with parkouring Santas on rooftops, like your feelings about that change over the course of the movie, because you realize to a degree that that these are in fact representations of dignity and self respect. And, and I think that that evolution that you go on as an audience when you watch this film, I think informs the way that you can engage with the fact that this man, this mayor, he's just doing his best in a situation where it's absolutely impossible to do more than that. Well, I mean, dignity is a word that comes up a few times in the film, and from from

the mouth of Musa himself. But I just in just in terms of like going back to like the occupation itself and like another theme of the movie is sort of like how little Western audiences are like the rest of the world really like understands about what it's like to live in the West Bank under Israeli occupation. And like for the city of Ramallah itself, like geographically, physically, I mean, it is penned in basically like sort of besieged by these ever encroaching settlements. And then like, what is it? It's sort of like a semi permanent garrison of IDF soldiers like outside the city that enter it and basically invade it at will.

It's complicated. But basically, you described it well, I mean, like a small piece of, you know, information about this is that the Oslo Accords, which were in the early 90s, basically determined that there were three areas of control on the West Bank, one of which would be areas under the Palestinian authorities control, which is the Palestinian government, so to speak. The second area would be under Israeli control. And third would be share between the two. Ramallah is part of area A, which means it's technically under the Palestinian Authority. So soldiers coming in to the city to seize cameras, to make arrests at random times in the day, that is illegal under international law. Settlements being

built nearby, you know, using landfills that are belonging to the Palestinian Authority taking drink, using drink water and polluting fields that belong to the Palestinian Authority is illegal under international law. The settlements themselves are illegal under international law. But this has been the de facto state of things for many, many years now in the West Bank. But Ramallah, you know, is essentially area A surrounded by area C, which means that if they want to build a sewage treatment plant, which for health code reasons just has to be a certain number of kilometers or meters away from people, then that's true in any city in the world. They can't like they literally can't do that because there's not enough room

outside of area A to do it. So they need approval, which is often denied. And this comes up a lot in the film where something as simple as a cemetery is next to impossible to get permission to build because it requires land that's not zoned to area A. And all these things are the under reported costs of occupation because it's frankly not as salacious and gripping to talk about that versus the very obvious costs, which is that of death and incarceration and murder. But little things like that, I think when you witness them and you also just witness the very basic realities of there's not a Palestinian currency, there's an Israeli currency, which Palestinians use because they are again occupied by another country.

These are things that I think that anyone who in the West professes to be against colonialism may not even know because there's not a discourse around this in the West. In fact, the discourse around this in the West is, I would say, pretty toxic at the moment because we've entered into a debate where the idea of being morally aligned with Palestinian rights is considered by many people to be tantamount to anti-Semitism. And therefore, it becomes very difficult to have conversations. You bring it up, but the issues of garbage and sewage come up quite frequently in this movie. And obviously, those are two of the biggest problems for any city in the world.

And there is one, I think, very poignant scene in the movie where the mayor is out on his sort of daily rounds of constituent services, which often are like the trash needs to be collected or sewage is like running through the street. And there's a scene of a guy trying to put out this giant garbage fire with a garden hose. And the mayor just sort of like turns, it does not to the camera, but he just sort of says as an aside, this hose is not going to cut it. Yes, it's a literal dumpster fire. It's a literal dumpster, but it is also, you know, you can pick a better sort of metaphorical stand-in for like the larger themes of the movie. And, you know, like you mentioned the issue of a sewage treatment plant, like the idea that like the city of Ramallah

itself is responsible for its own sewage, but because of the Israeli occupation, they can't build the infrastructure to accommodate it. But it goes further than that, though, because then it gets into issues of like the use of water and the use of water by Israeli settlements that are like ringing in the city who are using their water and like, you know, basically without any permission or regulation whatsoever. Absolutely. I mean, this is the crux of what Ramallah and many other cities in the West Bank have to deal with. I would even argue that Ramallah has it better than other parts of the West Bank. You know, Ramallah is a city with a really well functioning, highly functioning infrastructure. That's not true in other cities in the West Bank.

But I think the thing that comes up a lot in this film and also just in general discourse is there's this sort of line that is used by people who are not supporting Palestinian rights, which is frequently like, well, look, they can't even run their own cities, which is a terribly offensive and deeply flawed concept, given the fact that it's basically a racist, but it's also forgetting the deeper reality as to how these communities have been systematically impromptuized for decades. They can't run their cities because it's intended to be that way. Precisely. I mean, Palestine has to buy their water from Israel. Yeah, I mean, imagine running any other municipality without like a working sewage treatment facility. Right. Think about the problems that that would

like pile up. Exactly. And so I think the way the film engages with that is not head on, you know, and that's the thing that I really enjoyed about making this film is that I'm trying to approach these issues not in a way that's putting up a blackboard and aligning facts for you, but giving you a sense of what the challenges are for a place like this and seeing the way in which typical people just trying to provide basic civil services for their population are stymied at every turn. Another element in the film, and it's for the city of Ramallah itself, you mentioned it briefly earlier, is that Ramallah is a majority Christian city. And the minority himself is a minority, sorry, but like there is a significant Christian population in the city and Mayor Musa

himself is Christian, correct? So how does that fit into its place in like Palestinian government and culture as a whole? So it's, you know, I'll tell a brief funny story about that, which is, you know, one of the first times I went was during the Christmas season, and there were tons of Christmas decorations up and the tree was going up and all these things. And I remember asking a Palestinian friends, you know, like, look, I know that, you know, Jesus is a, is a prophet in Islam and everything. But, but like, why is Christmas such a big deal here? And he looked at me like I was a bit slow and was like, well, you know, he was born like right there. Down the block, basically. He's a hometown hero. And I mean, it's true, like he is a prophet in

Islam. This, you know, it is, it is an important thing to celebrate. And not only that, I mean, yeah, this city is historically Christian. It's no longer a majority Christian. But historically, it was founded by Christian families, five Christian families, and the descendants of those five families are the people who run for mayor every four years. And Musa is one of those descendants. So it's, it's, I mean, it's a tremendous part of the history of Palestine is the history of Christianity. It's the cradle, the birthplace of the religion. So like, but like in the movie, I would say like most of, like you said, like you, you made an effort to, to have it be very much like you, you, the viewer or in your, you were watching the same things that, that your subject

is without any really mediation. And as such, most of the politics and the occupation itself, it very much takes place on sort of the periphery of the film. But like the big geopolitical event that intercedes into the narrative of the film is Trump's decision to move the American embassy to Jerusalem. That happens like during the film. And it's like probably the biggest issue that is dealt with in the space of the time that you had to film. But like, so practically speaking, how did that decision to move the embassy to Jerusalem affect Mayor Musa's job and the people of Ramallah when it happened? Well, I'll tell you, it happened on my fifth day of filming, which was, which was pretty surprising to all of us, including me and, and, and Musa. And I was

filming when Musa found out his priest came into the office and told him the news. And that was a very funny scene because then he starts asking his aides, can they get TV? And they're like, okay, we haven't paid for the cable package. And he was like, get me your radio. He's like, I can't have my priest giving me the news about things before I know anyone else knows about it. Right. Yeah. And I mean, like, that's another thing is like, I wanted to, I feel like there's scenes like this of, of, of, I feel like if I were to describe the geopolitical events that happened in this film to somebody, they could write their own movie as to what you imagine would happen. A thing like, a thing like Trump announcing this embassy move, and then you can imagine protests in the street

and chaos and people being frustrated and, and cries of, you know, this is our home and this, and this and that. And I think we could all imagine what that script is because we've seen that so many times. But what I ended up filming and concentrating on is what surprised me, which is the utter fatigue and exhaustion that Palestinian folks in Ramallah were expressing during the protest about this saying to themselves, you know, we're saying chaos, same story is something one of them said. And like the protests being full of people who were barely cheering at all or barely shouting at all. And the head of the protest saying, you know, like half of you were just, you know, you're not even saying anything. If you're embarrassed, go home. And,

and all these things that again defied the, the understanding that I had, and expressed something that was even more tragic than the expected, which is just the general fatigue that I think Palestinian, that many Palestinian people can't speak for all Palestinians, but that many Palestinians, I'm sure must feel at this constant battle that they have to fight basically alone for their dignity and for their pride. And the international community is basically abandoned Palestine in so many ways. And certainly America has in many ways, you know, America historically is one of the larger partners for the peace process for Palestine. And that over the last four years has radically changed. And meanwhile, you have a mayor like Mayor Musa Hadid, who's wearing a suit

all the time. And he's very, you know, he's very charismatic, and he speaks English, and he's charming and Western. And he's everything basically that the West would want a leader in Palestine to look like, but the West rejects Palestine anyway. And what it shows you, I think, is that it's not about this thing of performing acceptance and performing respectability. It's something deeper that is very difficult for Western society to get around, which is that we simply do not prioritize Palestinian lives the way that we prioritize white lives. And you mentioned like the very conscious choice you made not to have any, there's no narration in this, there are no interviews, there's like no history lessons or voices of

authority. You only like you only give the viewer what like you and your subjects are seeing and doing. And then there is only one scene I remember where Musa actually like addresses the camera and you directly. And he asked you like, David, do people in America care or no? And like that struck me because the film is, depending on your point of view, it's hard to mistake an indictment of the occupation of Palestine by Israel. But in terms of what's actually on film or the things you film, it's perhaps even more so an indictment of the international community's response or lack thereof to the occupation. I mean, there's one, again, sort of dark and all pretty sad scene where Musa and his cabinet meet with a German delegation from Berlin. And like what happens

is basically like the people from Germany just basically asked them like, yeah, would you guys be willing to do sort of like a cultural exchange with students from Israel and Palestine and then we could get cameras there? Like wouldn't that be great? Like don't you like that kind of thing? Like maybe they play soccer or something. And you could just see Musa like his just his face just falls and he's just like, oh, this bullshit again. Like we just, we'd not do that. We're like, we're beyond that at this point. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I feel like the burden is always on people from the global south to explain their suffering to the rest of the world. And to come to the table, which is a phrase that the German delegation uses in that scene you're

talking about, you know, why can't you just put down your pride, sit at the table, talk to Israelis as though, you know, just like, let's all get over this. I think that, yeah, I mean, Musa's answer in that scene to that, that request is, is really excellent, which is just that, you know, it's a matter of dignity. I mean, if you're if you're if I if I can still get go walk down the street and a 16 year old soldier can literally at the with with his gun, force me to take off my clothes for any arbitrary reason that he wants. Should I be considered an equal? Can we sit down at a table as equals when we're not treated as slaves? Maybe. But in the meantime, I mean, it makes total sense. And it's something that the international community has a really hard time

understanding. And I felt like also the scene with the German delegation, also that scene that you mentioned where he does turn kind of break the fourth wall and address me. I mean, that's one of my favorite scenes in the film. Because I like I was talking about earlier, the films really posed around a lot of rules, really strict rules that I set for myself. And the way that I was filming it, no interviews. And and you're just watching it more like it feels like a fiction film when you're watching was kind of the goal was there's no narration, you're watching it as they're just watching a story with this kind of classic Hollywood main character sort of thing. But then the the rules break. And in that moment, I like to think that you, as an audience are kind

of inserting yourself into my headspace as this person who all of a sudden is now having to be behind the camera engaging with Musa, who's, who's the rules of the movie are over. There's no more movie. It's just him asking this American guy a question. Like, what do you think? Do people care about what's happening here? And I remember in that very moment, I could feel myself becoming this weird quasi character in my own movie. And just I realized that my answer in that point was going to be the answer for a lot of Americans who are watching the film, which is that, you know, well, I don't, I don't think so. I don't think they do. You mentioned the sort of the rules that you set up for yourself in in attacking this project. And I was just wondering, were there any

other like specific movies or filmmakers or documentaries that you were thinking about or consciously influenced by when you were filming and editing this? Well, there's this one film that I love, which is called Divine Intervention by a Palestinian filmmaker named Elia Suleiman, which is about 20 years old now, I think, maybe maybe older, even. No, I think 20 years old. And it's, it's also like an absurdist comedy in the West Bank. And it's fantastic. And it reminds me of like a Jacques Tati film, or like a Roy Anderson film. And it's, and it's really stunning. And I was thinking a lot about that when it came to the approach of using comedy in this part of the world to use it tactfully,

to make sure that you're never laughing at anybody. It's really, really important to me, especially as a Western filmmaker, to make sure that I wasn't going in there and saying, oh, look how funny these people are, that was not how I felt. And that's not what I wanted an audience to feel. I wanted the humor to always be a bonding point rather than a distancing point. So I really liked that film. And then also, I just, I just really love, like Italian neo-realist movies. I love how like Tree of Wind and Clogs, Rome Open City, Bicycle Thieves, I like fiction more than documentary. But I like, I like those films. What I like about them is that they're about, you know, massive social issues and, and, and,

films that are dealing with the state of society, but they're not about that. They're about a young boy who's, you know, who, who with, with their father, who they're trying to like, keep themselves alive and, you know, trying to make their business go. And a lot of Iranian cinema is like that for me too, like Kirstami work and Naderi's work. And I, I love films that are, that are kind of smaller stories that stand in for larger ones. So that by the time the credits roll, you realize, oh, that's what this film was about. And I feel like Mayer has that effect on people. Absolutely. Um, so, so in the movie, it definitely centers around city hall. And I mean that like the physical actual building of city hall in Ramallah. And there's, you know, there's a,

there's an upscale restaurant in the city hall building. And then perhaps my, you know, my favorite detail of all from perhaps most comedically beneficial, like the centerpiece of the film in a lot of ways is this ridiculous fountain that plays like with lights and plays music. And it's this sort of like a very, very, I don't know, very corny, like municipal public art, I guess. For folks who haven't seen the film, think, think like Bellagio style. Yeah, exactly. It's a very mini, mini version of it, the Bellagio. And at one point it's playing Celine Dion's My Heart Will Go On and sort of a light and jets of water sort of rhythmically enticing you to stand around it. But, you know, Miles Boiler here, I mean, if there's anything

like a climax of the movie, it's when you're in city hall with Musa and basically a small battle or skirmish happens right there between the IDF forces and, you know, the people in the city, people throwing rocks and like the fountain itself gets fucked up. And they're like, literally Musa is in city hall, like looking out the window at like soldiers firing off guns, like right in front of the city hall. And I was just like, what was it like to film that when it was happening? But also like filming Israeli soldiers in general, like that was that pretty fraught or were you nervous? I mean, like what is, what is like, you know, people film police officers in this country and it's always a sort of semi-dangerous thing to do if they realize

they're being filmed. Like, but at the same time, people are filming them all the time, like everyone has a camera, the press is there. Like, how did you fit into that as a filmmaker trying not to become part of the story? Yeah, that bit was nerve wracking, for sure. Filming that scene, I think when you're filming something like that, you kind of, by necessity, disassociate a little bit. So for me, I have very weird memories of actually filming it. And my brain was mostly just occupied with like, I've got 62 minutes left on my memory card and 60 minutes left on my battery. So how can I like juggle these things and like turn them on and off and make sure I get the scene. But also there were times when it would become very clear that some of the soldiers outside could have,

you know, I mean, they could have easily come inside if they wanted to. And we were kind of trapped inside of City Hall. So there were moments when I, when I just realized, you know, if there was any moment where it looked like my filming was going to endanger that I was with, I just had to put it down and kind of hide the camera. But thankfully, nothing happened to the people in my vicinity. And I think as a filmmaker, the last thing you want to do is to endanger anybody. So I just wanted to make sure of that. But other than that, ironically, the last thing I'm thinking about is whether I'm myself in danger, because I think you become kind of an idiot when you're filming something like this, and you just get obsessed with making sure that you get the

material that you need to tell the story. And for me, that was, you know, that was, of course, like a very unexpected and but very fundamental scene to capture. And I also wanted to just make sure I was capturing it through Musa's eyes, which is one of the reasons, you know, the film doesn't have any Israeli characters, because the average Ramallah, I doesn't have any interaction with Israelis, except for soldiers in their town. There's not any, you know, conversation to be had otherwise. So so it's it's when you're seeing all this happening. And when you're filming when I'm when I'm when you're seeing this footage of of Israeli soldiers doing these really terrible things, a lot of the soldiers kind of know they're being filmed anyway. But it's again,

become so subhuman, the relationship that they have to the people of the West Bank, in terms of the way that they see Palestinians, that I think a lot of them would never compute and see that that was something that they'd have to therefore watch their behavior around or stop doing what they're doing, because someone might be filming it, it's almost expected at this point. Well, I mean, sort of like the the incident that kind of kicks off this violence here is that like Israeli soldiers were going like basically store to store, you know, with guns and like in full gear, and demanding to sort of audit or screen their security camera footage to find some theoretical gunman or find evidence of something. And I was wondering, are you ever

concerned that they might look at you and your camera and your footage and sort of seize it under the pretense of some sort of anti terrorism or evidence or anything like that? Right. Yeah, that was the concern. I mean, that's what I was thinking about, which when in these moments of just like, Oh, I very easily like all it's going to take is one of them to look at me and just have the thought and nothing would stop them. I as a result, of course, and also I mean, my main fear at the beginning of that evening of filming was actually just that I didn't have a press jacket on. I had a black coat. It was wintertime. And I had a large metallic object underneath my arm. And frankly, my first thought was I have to get myself into City Hall without them seeing me,

because if they see me on the street, they're going to think that I'm armed. So like this movie, your movie has gotten a lot of a lot of great press. I mean, it's gotten a lot of great reviews, and you're getting a lot of like, you know, sort of promotion for it. But I'm wondering, has there been any reaction from the Israeli government or press to your film? Because like I bring it up because I remember when five broken cameras came out and there was like, got a lot of critical praise, there was sort of a PR push to offset a lot of the attention that that movie had received. Like, have you seen anything similar like that with your film? Honestly, no, I haven't. And I would like to think that that speaks more towards the film's

specific focus rather than the fact that people are maybe not aware of it. But I think that honestly, I think it's kind of hard to find a problem with my movie. And I know I'm biased. But I think politically, it's not a, it's not, it's not twisting any realities, you know, it's not making anyone look bad. It's showing people who are frankly, making themselves look bad. I'm not I'm not out to get anybody. It's not the film's not a, it's not a verbal indictment of the verbal indictment of the Israeli state. It's a, it's a film that adds imagery and complexity to the idea of Palestine and Palestinian lives. And I think with that in mind, I think it would, I think be pretty hard to, I mean, I would certainly welcome it if any Israeli folks or

folks in the Israeli lobby want to tell me what is wrong with the film. I'd certainly love to talk to them about it. But so far, I've only received, at worst, a couple of emails from people wishing they were more Israeli characters in the film and that it told both sides of the story. And I, my response in that case is, you know, it's, it's, it's sometimes it's unfair to be balanced. Right. I mean, it's also like your choice of subject. I mean, Musa is obviously a very, a very diligent and serious man, but he is, you know, I don't think anyone would mistake him for some kind of radical firebrand or a particularly like terrifying revolutionary figure. I think so too. I think it's really hard to find any problem with him, which is one of the reasons

I wanted to make the film. I think it's, it's, again, it also like, like not to beat a dead horse with this, but the film is not, the film is not really overtly political, except for the fact that if you're Palestinian, to exist is a political act in which case the film is very political. I mean, Leah, like, like that, that's what's so funny about the movie is that like the small bore sort of mind-numbing details of like everyday municipal government, like he said, like, you know, putting in a park bench, making sure the volleyball court is to the regulation size is that all of it, all of it is deeply political and even radical because it's all taking place under the, you know, the rubric of this great, frankly, illegal military occupation of a city

and a people in a nation. Precisely, which is why that fountain that you mentioned against Boyle earlier, but that's partly why that fountain becomes such a provocative symbol throughout the film is that it's not just a fountain. Anywhere else it would just be a fountain, but what goes into this fountain and what it means to be able to have this fountain actually work at the end of the day becomes a story of resistance. So I guess finally, now that, now that the movie's out and it's getting, it's getting some press and a lot of acclaim, I'm wondering, have you been in contact with Mayor Musa recently and like, what's he up to? How are the, how are the branding efforts going? And is the Celine Dion fountain up and running

again? We talk all the time. We talk constantly. I'm, I, we're friends, you know, we've become friends and I'm friends with him and his family. Things are rough in Palestine right now, you know, COVID has basically given even further license to Israel to turn the West Bank into an outdoor prison. Travel is almost impossible. Israel has now vaccinated almost 20% of its population, including settlers. No vaccines are currently planned for Palestinians. So, and, and, you know, the Center for Disease Control has just made it very clear that just because you have a vaccine does not mean that you wouldn't necessarily be contagious and carrying the disease. So this is a, this is a pretty dark time for Palestine, also politically,

there is a glimmer of hope with the exit of the Trump administration. But it is not necessarily the case that any administration in the last several decades has been friendly to Palestinian rights in the United States. Certainly not. David, I want to thank you so much for joining me and I want to thank you for your very fun and entertaining move me, but also, you know, it's not a laugh ride. It's a serious film folks, but the film is mayor and David, if people would like to, and here in America would like to see the movie, how is that possible? Yeah, if you go to mayorfilm.com, it's information where the film's available. It's currently in virtual cinemas until early February, and then it'll be on iTunes and video on demand services, also through

mayorfilm.com in mid-February. David Osset, thank you so much. The film is mayor. Thanks, Will.