Between Fences

Israel's African Refugees and the Theater of the Oppressed

Holot (Hebrew for "Sands") is a detention center in the middle of the Israeli desert that was built to quickly address an influx of African asylum seekers, mostly refugees from Eritrea and Sudan. The migrants in Holot have no legal status in Israel, and the government seems to have no plan to grant them asylum, so they remain in an indefinite state of limbo.

Into this Beckettian reality enter theater director Chen Alon and filmmaker Avi Mograbi. Their team begins to engage the refugees with Theater of the Oppressed - a unique method that uses the refugees own personal stories as a basis, and techniques like re-enactment, dramatization, and role-reversal as a way to foster expression and understanding. As a confrontation, it raises the question whether the role players--and by extension the audience--can put themselves in the refugees' shoes. Between Fences proposes Theater of the Oppressed as a lens for seeing deeper into the current refugee crisis.

Official Selection at the Berlin International Film Festival.

"Generally considered the most fiercely independent of Israeli filmmakers, documentarist Avi Mograbi returns to dance over the aching toes of his country's establishment and the guilty consciences of his fellow countrymen ..." - Screen International