‘To escape Gaza is already an achievement. And then to be trans?’: the women defying national and gender boundaries
The Belle from Gaza premieres at the Cannes film festival on Friday – an achievement made the more remarkable as there was a point last year when it looked as if it would never be seen.
After Hamas’s attack on 7 October and the Israeli military offensive that followed, its French director, Yolande Zauberman, considered shelving her finished project. “I thought maybe we should not show this movie for the moment, because what’s happening is so big, so huge”, says Zauberman.
Her film was not meant to be “a demonstration of anything”, but its title and synopsis alone – the story of transsexual women moving from Palestine to Tel Aviv to live out their new identities – risked being read as a political statement on the current conflict.
In Israel, gay marriage can be registered but only if it is performed abroad, and male-to-female sex reassignment surgery is carried out in public hospitals, while in the Palestinian territories homosexuality remains a taboo.
Zauberman eventually decided to show the film after the positive reactions of both Arab and Jewish viewers at a test screening. Did she consider that her film could be politicised after its premiere at Cannes? “Of course, but it’s strange, because so far that is exactly what is not happening.”
A veteran film-maker of nine documentaries and features, Zauberman, 69, chanced on her subject during the making of her César awardwinning M, about an Israeli man who was raped in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community as a child and becomes attracted to transsexual women later in life. In Tel Aviv, some of these women could be found at night on Hatnufa Street, in the south of the city, offering sex for cash.
Meeting the women, Zauberman found that many of them were Arab, and picked up a story about one woman who was rumoured to have walked from the Gaza Strip to Tel Aviv, a journey of at least 45 miles.
The story captured her imagination: “Gaza at the time was already a jail for people,” she says. “For somebody to manage to escape that jail is already an achievement. And then to be or to become a trans woman?”
In the film, which documents Zauberman’s search over almost five years of filming, the titular figure remains elusive – a smartphone photo that provides the only point of reference turns out to depict a different person altogether – and other women move into the foreground instead.
“After a while I thought, maybe it’s better not to find her, because what would we do if we find the Belle from Gaza?”, Zauberman says. “Isn’t it going to be too dangerous for her?”
For some of the women, leaving behind the Palestinian territories did amount to a liberation. One of them, Danielle, describes being beaten and ordered to run towards a checkpoint on the West Bank, with the intention of making Israeli guards believe her to be a terrorist, and shoot her.
But the picture is nuanced. Even in Tel Aviv, some of the four women appear on edge when interviewed, eyeing the shadows entering their street to distinguish potential customers from potential attackers. “They are safe and not safe,” Zauberman says. Some have the requisite papers to live in Israel, others don’t. “Above all, they are really strong. And to live their life, you really have to be.”
While some of them are fearful of being sent back to their parents (“they will kill her for sure”), others have supportive family and loyal Muslim friends.
Religion plays a surprisingly large role, even in the more secular metropolis. One woman, Nathalie, begins to wear a hijab after her operation and starts to recite from the first chapter of the Qur’an. “Religion and family is very important for them. And during the process of the movie, they become more and more religious”.
The film opens with an interview with an older, Arab transsexual woman who recalls the intense affair she once had with an Orthodox rabbi. “What interests me is that these women know Israel so well – they know everything about it,” Zauberman says. “If one day there is a sort of peace, they could play a really a big role, because they know both sides very well.”
In the run-up to Cannes, there have been criticisms of the lack of Palestinian voices at the world’s largest film festival. There are no Palestinian filmmakers in the official selection, and protests along the Croisette and its surroundings have been pre-emptively banned.
“This year we decided to host a festival without polemics,” festival chief Thierry Frémaux said on the opening night, perhaps mindful of the way the conflict in the Middle East ended up dominating the awards gala at the Berlin film festival earlier this year.
In The Belle of Gaza, which has minimal narration, the Palestinian women of Hatnufa Street are given the space to speak for themselves, but there’s an argument to be had that in Zauberman’s film Gaza remains an abstraction, a cipher for a state of imprisonment – and for the world’s largest film festival, a way to turn a blind eye on a conflict that may be complex, but is also costing real human lives.
It’s an argument the festival’s curators should engage with, rather than the directors behind its films. In her 1987 debut Classified People, Zauberman told the story of a mixedrace couple in apartheid South Africa. The lesson it taught her, she said, was that for film-makers politics have to be found in the personal. “The only place, the real place of resistance, is intimacy.”
• The Belle of Gaza premieres in competition at Cannes on Friday
most memorable dance – a moment of sublime tap virtuosity – has Astaire partnered with a hatrack.
15. The Towering Inferno (1974)
Few actors have the charisma to compete with a 138-storey skyscraper on fire, but Astaire won this classic disaster movie’s sole acting Oscar nomination for a supporting role. He donned his dinner jacket and hit the dancefloor once more to play the conman Harlee, wooing a wealthy woman played by Jennifer Jones in a markedly poignant, even heroic, characterisation from the septuagenarian star.
14. Finian’s Rainbow (1968)
Francis Ford Coppola’s antiracist fantasy musical about a leprechaun (Tommy Steele) and a pot of gold polarised critics, but there is no denying the joy to be found in seeing Astaire turn on the charm, and the choreography, again. He plays Finian, a shady but amicable Irishman, who dances his way through “Rainbow Valley”, by way of a gymnastic tap-and-cane number in a barn and a jig or two with Petula Clark.
13. Holiday Inn (1942)
Best remembered for Bing Crosby singing White Christmas, the blockbuster musical Holiday Inn has a song for every season, all written by Irving Berlin. In the film’s most explosive number, Astaire takes to the stage solo for a tap tribute to 4 July, complete with a pocketful of fireworks and a lit cigarette. Not always an easy watch, this is one of a handful of Astaire’s films to feature blackface.
12. Funny Face (1957)
A film really has to be this gorgeous and this funny for audiences to swallow the 30-year age gap between Astaire and Audrey Hepburn. Plaudits to Givenchy for Hepburn’s chic wardrobe, George and Ira Gershwin for the tunes, Kay Thompson for the laughs and Astaire’s sheer panache as he croons S’wonderful with Hepburn in soft focus.
11. The Barkleys of Broadway (1949)
No sooner had he returned from retirement number one than fate threw Astaire back with Ginger Rogers in this bittersweet romance about a showbiz marriage on the rocks. When they take to the stage for They Can’t Take That Away from Me, the old magic returns in full force. A few months later, the Academy gave him an honorary Oscar.
10. Three Little Words (1950)
The musical numbers come thick and fast in this sprightly biopic of the Tin Pan Alley songwriters Bert Kalmar (Astaire) and Harry Ruby (Red Skelton). Astaire was fond of this film, which tapped into his nostalgia for vaudeville. Highlights include his numbers with Vera-Ellen, who plays Kalmar’s wife; her agility allowed Astaire to include plenty of energetic high kicks, including the choreographer Hermes
Pan’s innovative “hurdling lift”.
9. You Were Never Lovelier (1942)
Rita Hayworth was one of Astaire’s best dance partners, although they made only two films together. This is the best of them, with more time for his old-fashioned chivalry to spark with her naturalistic sex appeal and Latin skills. Astaire said he designed the steps with Hayworth himself; highlights include the high-speed swing routine the Shorty George and the romantic swirls of I’m Old-Fashioned.
8. Follow the Fleet (1936)
Art deco splendour abounds in the rightly celebrated Let’s Face the Music and Dance routine, in which Fred’n’Ginger twirl in perfect symmetry around one of the grandest of Van Nest Polglase’s so-called big white sets. The routine is done in one immaculate, head-to-toe take. But in I’d Rather Lead a Band, Astaire really flexes his tap skills, dancing on and off the beat.
7. Broadway Melody (1940) of 1940
There is plenty to like in this blackand-white backstage musical with songs by Cole Porter, but hold tight for Begin the Beguine. Astaire and his co-star, Eleanor Powell, had such fast feet that they reportedly intimidated each other. When they dance together, the effect is hypnotic: on a mirrored floor, with a million twinkling lights. When the band stops playing, their feet become their own orchestra.
6. Shall We Dance (1937)
Perhaps the Fred’n’Ginger film with the funniest numbers, including the deathless Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off, and the greatest variety of dance styles and spoofs, although it has a typically ridiculous plot. There are serious moments: Slap That Bass sees Astaire and the Gershwins pay tribute to jazz rhythms with a Black chorus, while the finale is a beautifully surreal showstopper.
5. Easter Parade (1948)
Astaire came out of retirement when Gene Kelly broke his ankle to co-star with Judy Garland in this MGM musical packed with Berlin show tunes. One minute, Astaire commands the stage as he swaggers through Steppin’ Out with My Baby, twirling his cane at full speed and in scintillating slow-mo; the next, he and Garland clown around in rags as Just a Couple of Swells.
4. Silk Stockings (1957)
With Cyd Charisse as his partner in Porter numbers such as All of You, gilded by “glorious Technicolor, breathtaking CinemaScope and stereophonic sound”, cold-war musical Silk Stockings (a remake of Ninotchka), represented a glorious high for Astaire. At the end of the film, he parodies modern moves in The Ritz Roll and Rock and finally flattens his top hat. He didn’t make another musical for 11 years.
3. Swing Time (1936)
Never Gonna Dance? Don’t believe it. This was Astaire’s favourite collaboration with Rogers. The finale is spectacular, an extravaganza on a giant glossy-black staircase, but this film is crammed with funny and romantic highlights. From A Fine Romance and The Way You Look Tonight to Pick Yourself Up and Astaire’s epic Bojangles of Harlem homage, they required seriously hard-to-reach levels of precision.
2. The Band Wagon (1953)
This hyperactive MGM musical birthed the hymn to the collective joys of showbiz That’s Entertainment, yet Astaire pulls focus as a solo lead, humming By Myself and starting a frenzy in an arcade with Shine on Your Shoes. Pure bliss arrives when he pairs with Charisse for classical romance (the impeccable Dancing in the Dark) or free-form noir pastiche (The Girl Hunt Ballet).
1. Top Hat (1935)
Elegance is at the heart of Astaire’s enduring appeal. No film showcases his old-fashioned poise and sparkling charisma better than this timeless classic, the finest of his collaborations with Rogers. The plot is no more substantial than the feathers on Rogers’ Cheek to Cheek gown, but the footwork is fluid and the chemistry between the miscommunicating lovers is divine.