Director's Statement

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When I moved to Berlin, I didn’t expect my Jewish identity to define me as much as it does here. I left Israel in opposition to the occupation of Palestine, hoping to escape the nationalism and conflict that shaped my homeland. Instead, I found myself caught in a different kind of entanglement—one where my national identity is inescapable, and my Jewishness is both fetishized and scrutinized. In Israel, left-wing views like mine mark you as a traitor; in Germany, they make you an anti-Semitic. In many ways, I’ve come to feel like an asylum seeker, suspended between two worlds.

The New Jews is a deeply personal exploration of this exile. Through my own experiences and those of fellow Israeli expats, the film unpacks the contradictions of being a Jewish outsider in Berlin—a city haunted by its past yet eager to embrace its Jews, as long as they fit a specific mold. Germans display an obsessive interest in Israel and Jewishness, often treating us with a reverence that can feel suffocating. Yet beneath this politeness lies an unresolved tension—latent racism, historical guilt, and rigid ideas of what being Jewish should mean. This dynamic shapes not only political discourse but also personal relationships, seeping into everything from casual interactions to dating culture, where Holocaust guilt and fantasies about Jews take on unsettlingly erotic forms.

To capture this fluid, often surreal experience, the film blends stark interviews with rotoscope animation, mirroring the fragmented identities we navigate. The animation reflects our detachment, our constant reinvention, and the performative nature of identity in today’s digital world—where Jewishness, too, is curated, projected, and misunderstood. Much of our film unfolds in online spaces—social media, dating apps, late-night phone calls—where connection and alienation exist side by side, blurring the line between authenticity and performance.

The New Jews was conceived and researched in 2015 and the majority of it was shot in 2018 and 2020, long before the October 7th, 2023, Hamas attack and the devastating war that followed in Gaza. Even then, as Jewish filmmakers critical of Zionism, we faced accusations of being provocative, even anti-Semitic—from both Jewish and non-Jewish critics in Israel and Germany. These pressures kept the film unfinished—until now. In a time when dissenting Jewish voices are increasingly silenced, this film is more urgent than ever. The New Jews is not just a search for a new identity—it is a challenge to the narratives that seek to define us.