But what about the daily physical and verbal pressures that women face during the same interviews, or simply on the street or on public transport?

Julie, the main character, has a position of high responsibility, which the misogyny of her colleagues puts in jeopardy. On the other hand, Karim, although being French, cannot deny his origins, and pretend to an unsuspecting job interview or prejudice.

What happens when two individuals suffering from the prejudices that society conveys to them come to compare the gravity of their respective situations?

The fortuitous meeting of these two individuals is an opportunity for me to unveil the common denominator that links them, namely the clichés of which they are victims and prisoners on a daily basis, and which they sometimes feed despite themselves.

A job interview is an event whose rules are often biased by belonging to a genre or origin. By exposing these prejudices and stereotypes within this codified situation, I want to highlight them in order to better denounce their absurdity, and to demonstrate that if everyone makes its best, we can make our differences a force and change mentalities.

Since we began working on this documentary violence, fear and despair have escalated to soul crushing levels. When war broke out in Gaza in the summer of 2014, retaliation for acts of violence impacted and took the lives of many on both sides in the most brutal ways. These dangerous, intense and difficult times intensified the interest in and focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Can there be a greater moment to leverage this attention and to bring forward a more hopeful and rarely seen reality?

There is a dire need to give voice to individuals like Eden Fuchs and Ibrahim Issa. Their experiences are a testament to what is possible when courageous individuals take a step forward to deal with their fears, preconceptions and assumptions. Our documentary is a platform to amplify these stories of hope and to encourage others to find the same strength and inspiration. We hope that our film will challenge those who don’t have access to these narratives and experiences to reconsider the ways in which they look at their neighbors and create new possibilities for themselves and their families, and their communities.
We know too well what war looks like, but do we know what peace looks like? We have long been bombarded with images and stories of violence from the region. How do you develop friendships and partnerships in such an environment? How do people break away from a conflict-focused system to simply get along or to create long term collaborations? What are the transformative moments in the personal stories of these individuals that make them agents of change? These are some of the questions that inform my work.

There is also one other question that emerged during filming. How did the protagonists deal with the social pressure and antagonism they were subjected to from their own families and friends because they chose to engage with the “enemy,” (euphemistically referred to at times as naïve peace activists). They constantly have to face the consequences of their choices in their private and public lives, a heavy price to pay without the promise of an immediate reward.
Thanks for watching our film.