Julia Bacha and Making Budrus

 On Dec. 8, Pat Aufderheide and Julia Bacha, director of the documentary Budrus, talked about making films on challenging subjects at Washington D.C.’s West End Cinema. Budrus, like other films from Just Vision, focuses on civilian efforts for peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In it, Palestinian villagers use non-violence to challenge Israeli attempts to enclose their village with the security wall Israel is building throughout the territories.

“They always tell you to target your audience,” said Bacha, “but we didn’t want to segment our audiences. We wanted a film that would work as well with Israelis, Palestinians and Americans.” The hard part, she said, was including Americans, since they knew so much less about the on-the-ground experience of the conflict.  Among the solutions were focusing on one main story, finding strong and sympathetic characters, and a respectful approach to all. “We were very lucky to find an Israeli soldier [a woman] who would talk frankly with us,” she said.

The story of Budrus has occurred throughout the territories, she noted. The leader of the struggle in Budrus feared that other village leaders would criticize him for claiming too much credit; Bacha was concerned too that the compelling and dramatic story represent the many other stories rather than claiming to be distinctive. One solution was to include, at the end, more information; as well, the film’s website includes mini-videos on other leaders and locations. Bacha, an editor by training, also spoke about the key role of editors; she herself hired an editor to help her with hard questions in Budrus.

Finally, Bacha spoke about the importance of holding on to some rights in every distribution deal; the film is being largely self-distributed, building in part on theatrical connections made during the distribution of Just Vision’s earlier film Encounter Point.