How did you decide to make this film?

As with many other things in my life, so was the making of this movie an unexpected surprise. After six years of working for television I decided I wanted to experience helping and giving and to join the world of humanitarian causes. I believed that helping the needy would give me more satisfaction than making movies for commercial TV. I joined a French organization working in Sri Lanka about a year after the tsunami. I was put in charge of the project of reestablishing local businesses. Innocently, I believed that in a place where what is needed is so clear, how to fulfill the need would be obvious. All that would be required of me would be good will and the necessary means.

The reality proved to be different. The vision of a simple give and take was shattered faster than I thought. The difficulties working with the local translator and the regulations imposed by the French organization made my life difficult and interfered with my desire to unconditionally be of assistance. Every encounter with the local population left me feeling helpless in regard to what I was allowed or not allowed to do and to the organization's inability to assist without clashing with the local mentality.

I came to understand that there was a gap between the humanitarian vision and the reality on the ground. I was stuck by the fact that even when dealing with good intentions, power struggles arise.

It seems that being an Israeli whose daily existence involves confrontation between cultures, has made me sensitive to the power struggles occurring while trying to overcome differences in language and mentality. I decided to return to my natural role of observing through the camera lens. My former position was taken by Danny, the hero of the film. I documented his activities to see what results he would attain. And thus began the film.

 How did the shooting take place, which difficulties - or on the contrary what pleasant surprises - did you deal with?

The filming was a great experience, I could not ask for better shooting situation. The fact that I was by myself, taking care for the camera, sound etc, was technically hard, but gave me the chance of highly intimate relationship with the heroes of the film.

I filmed the events while participating in the activities of the organization, and thus happened to be in the homes of the locals during highly personal scenes in which the camera became a focal point for all the participants. The locals, who saw me as an authority figure, used both me and the camera as testimony of the sincerity of their intentions. The Western volunteers used me as a confession tool, and as an opportunity to deliver monologues exposing the difficulties they were facing and the conflicts they were dealing with. All these enabled an intimate, close-up view of what was happening, and revealed to me the nature and the nuances of relationships that might otherwise not have been exposed. I have no droughts that I had the ideal situation for documentary filming.

How was the film welcomed?

While screening the film I realised that the audience is going through the same ambivalent feeling I had towards the heroes of the film while I was being in Sri Lanka and filmed them.

The film takes the great drama of the rescue fantasy and transforms it into a sad and sometimes comic daily reality. This is something that people prefer not to see and to know. So, more than once I heard people making jokes out of the scenes, as they were not real. More than this, the heroes of the film are not really heroes; on the contrary, they are sometimes too simple, to daily, and it’s easy to identify with them. Therefore it is also easy to criticize them. At the beginning the criticism is mostly negatively, but it’s getting more and more ambivalent towards the end of the film.

Emotionally the film puts the spectator into ‘two minds’ filling towards the events, and in each moment of the film he feels a contrary filling to the one he felt the moment before. This ambivalent feeling is what I felt during the shooting, I was criticising the characters, and irritated by them. But, when you understand the complexity of the reality over there, you can only be angry with the situation.