THE STORY – “The Road to Jericho” is a musical and visual journey, a poem in images – a hybrid of documentary and fiction that weaves archival images from earlier films, with the voices of Samuel Fuller, Jeanne Moreau, Arthur Miller, and Yitzhak Rabin, among others, into the contemporary reality of the Bedouins of Khan El Ahmar, now threatened with eviction by settlers on this road to Jericho. A poignant, sensitive meditation on human destinies on this desert land, steeped in history.
THE CAST – Irène Jacob, Jeanne Moreau, Arthur Miller, Samuel Fuller & Muhammad Abu Jihad
THE TEAM – Amos Gitai (Director/Writer) & Marie-José Sanselme (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 76 Minutes
Humanity is soaked in centuries of rich, layered history that built the foundations of the society we live in today. Every city, landscape, and culture is the product of countless years of prosperity, struggle, and conflict – which makes it remarkably difficult to deconstruct any of today’s biggest social issues without viewing them through the framework of many years of history. This is exactly what “The Road to Jericho” gets right; the Palestinian people’s existential struggle is one of the most pressing issues in the modern world, but it cannot fully be understood merely through modern film, literature, or art.
These intimate perspectives may give us a glimpse into the brutality of war and its tragic consequences, but “The Road to Jericho” understands that the deepest, most authentic perspective can only be achieved by those who’ve lived through it, and places these figures at the core of its story. But Amos Gitai’s film is much more than a documentary; he blends modern-day filmmaking with archival footage, visual creativity, and even spoken poetry to forge a much richer, more layered portrait of life in Jericho under threat from oppressive Israeli settlers. Gitai understands that factual comprehension alone isn’t enough – his audience is invited to truly feel the experience of living in this precious, historic region in a way that only abstract art can provide.
As such, “The Road to Jericho” rejects the concept of narrative cohesion altogether. There’s no clear story that weaves this artistic project together, nor are there any recurring characters that audiences can form empathetic relationships with. Instead, Gitai offers several brief tableaus that each invite the viewer into this world through a different medium, whether that’s talking-head interviews, extensive landscape shots, or quotes and poetry that have endured as a first-hand perspective of this rich culture.
This abstract approach to filmmaking is both “The Road to Jericho”’s most endearing feature and its most glaring weakness. Although Gitai attempts to paint an unorthodox, immersive portrait of life in modern-day Palestine, the film struggles to bring any of its ideas together into a cohesive whole. There are moments that work really well and deliver the incredibly striking message that Gitai is clearly aiming for, but they’re all rapidly undercut by major stylistic switch-ups that prevent the viewer from ever truly immersing themselves in an individual scene. For example, one of the most affecting and moving scenes in “The Road to Jericho” is a very simple, uninterrupted interview with a resident of the holy city who recounts the double standards he’s faced from Israeli settlers. He explains that young children are sent to harass and disturb the Palestinian residents because their age gives authorities an excuse not to arrest them. Meanwhile, Palestinian children as young as 12 and 13 are arrested and treated appallingly for far less. His testimony is an extremely powerful one, but these moments of genuine, insightful humanity are few and far between due to the film’s insistence on remaining abstract and intangible.
There’s an inherent contradiction at the heart of Gitai’s approach, with his film clearly wanting to strip away the distance that can exist between an audience and a historical tragedy. The film tries to ask us to experience Jericho not as some distant geopolitical abstraction but as a living place inhabited by real people, yet its most experimental sequences often have the opposite effect, creating another layer of distance between the viewer and the reality being depicted. The poetry, archival imagery, and carefully composed landscapes can be beautiful, but they sometimes feel like interpretations of an experience that the film’s own interview subjects communicate far more effectively through their words. “The Road to Jericho” is at its most powerful when it remembers that history isn’t just an abstract collection of ideas, but rather something experienced by individual human beings who can tell their stories more rivetingly than any filmmaker can.
The result is 76 minutes of bold, ambitious filmmaking that aims to immerse the viewer in something conceptual and ineffable. But its strongest moments are actually those when it simply presents reality in its rawest, most vulnerable form. There is absolutely a place for moments of visual, poetic creativity that challenge the viewer, but using this as the entire foundation for the project feels jarring and inaccessible. “The Road to Jericho” is unfortunate proof that even the most human and universal stories need to be presented in the right way to make for an accessible, compelling film.
