Arrival

How long do we wait to open our hearts? When is it safe to do so? How long does forgiveness take? Is it the right path? Is forgiveness even possible? I was born and raised in Israel to a family with Eastern European roots, I visited Auschwitz as a teenager, served in the Israeli army for three years, and since childhood I have been fascinated with my people’s tortured past and its implications today. I got the idea for this story from my mother, based on an experience we had in Germany when I was a four years old. Since then, and up until I shot the film, my mother has refused to return to Berlin. The reactions of the women in the film, like my mother and many others, are not based on their own memories from the Second World War. Rather, they are inherited collective memories. Arrival deals with two fundamental elements of cinema, and history: Time and space, and the dynamic relationship between them. While I developed the story for this film in Berlin, last year, I was living in the same space: I walked the same streets, I heard the same language, I saw the same buildings, but I was free. On the train, the boy forces an encounter; the same way I did as a child, same as I am doing today with Arrival. I have been told to hold on to the past because it should never happen again… but that doesn’t mean we can’t change. As the generation that shapes the future, it is my responsibility and my true hope that we can remember; yet heal, grow and reconcile.