"THE GOLAN IS SYRIALISTIC" says the Graffiti. The Golan has always been an alienating and surrealistic place, so efficiently and lovingly built and cultivated by Israeli settlers atop the destruction and desolation of two wars.

As the Middle East reaches a dangerous and violent crossroads on the path to peace the film takes an intimate look at the Israeli settlers of the Golan and challenges them about their rights, their needs and the pragmatism of their ideas about the future of the Golan.

Director's Statement
In early winter of this year, just before boarding a plane for Europe I came across a graffity in the men's room at Tel Aviv Airport. I was surprised at the cleverness of the anonymous writer who found the precise description for what I have been thinking over the past year of research and writing the script for the film "Golan". Etched on a metal door was the slogan "THE GOLAN IS SYRIALISTIC".
The Golan Heights, territory captured by Israel from Syria in the 1967 Six Day War, is the price Israel is expected to pay for an agreement with Syria. For 18'000 Israelis who settled there during the past 32 years - it is an unbearable and impossible price, much too high compared to the worth of a peace with a highly questionable and suspicious partner.

While Palestinians carry out suicide attacks inside Israel and the Israeli Defense Forces occupies major Palestinian cities in the West bank, life on the Golan Heights continues with increased vigor. Neta and Koby, Miri, Yotam, and Menachem, all settlers in the Golan, examine questions preoccupying most Israelis - natives and new immigrants alike: what is our relationship with this land? What are the reasonable borders for the State of Israel?

The Golan's natural landscape sometimes resembles that of the moon and has always been imbued with a feeling of artificiality, an unaturaleness, an interference, that is forceful and energetic, attempting almost too zealously to realize the Modernist utopian and romantic vision.

Cinema du Réel Paris