La Strada Documentation Center

Promised Land

Document number
1591
Date
2004
Title
Promised Land
Author/publisher
Amos Gitai
Availability
LSI library
Document type(s)
Multimedia,
Keywords
Israel, Estonia, Russia, Egypt, Sexual exploitation, Human trafficking, Forced labour, Women's rights; Women; Control and regulation of prostitution, Protection, Punishable forms of prostitution, Documentary
Summary
A night in the Sinai desert. A group of men and women keep warm around a camp fire under the moonlight. The women come from Eastern Europe. The men, who normally walk their herds in the area, are Bedouins. Tomorrow, they will secretly cross the border. Tomorrow, Diana and the others will be beaten, raped and auctioned off. They will be passed from one hand to another, merchandised by Anne into Hanna's hostess club, victims of an international network of trafficking women. One night in the club, Diana meets Rose. Their encounter is a sign of hope into the women's descend into hell. Amos Gitai's concern for oppressed women goes a long way back in time (Bangkok-Bahrain, Kadosh). Promised Land questions the notion of territoriality (the traffickers speak all kinds of languages: Arab, French, Russian, Hebrew). Gitai depicts Israel as a huge capitalist brothel in the age of globalization. The reprensentation of enslaved bodies turned into a merchandise and contemptuously transported across borders and through checkpoints, appears as a metaphor of the way a scornful economic system conquers the world
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