 FESTIVALS: * IDFA Reflecting Images * Planet Doc Review * Docaviv *Toronto Jewish Film Festival (Canada) * London Palestine Film Festival (London, UK) * Israeli Documentary Festival (Budapest, Hungary) | Israel LTD
The Israel Experience is the one of the largest Zionist outreach projects launched in recent years. Its purpose is to create new allies for the government of Israel. To this end, “The Israel Experience” provides young Jews guided tours of the “Holy Land”. Loushy’s eyeopening film follows one such tour from beginning to end, accompanying a group of young North Americans as they undergo an intensive pedagogic voyage through a “strong and righteous” Israel. She follows these modernday pilgrims as they are shepherded past contested borders, through Druze villages, over the Golan Heights, and on to Mount Herzl Cemetery and the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. All the while, military guides recall heroic sacrifices made in fashioning the one true homeland: the Yom Kippur War, the struggle against Hezbollah, or the cultivation of blossoming life in desert soil. While the young vacationers are invited to return home as "true ambassadors" for Israel, Loushy’s documentary alerts us to the fertile concoction of myth and militarism being instilled in these impressionable young visitors. PRESS IMAGES: (click to preview) 
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