Kino 7 im Zoo-Palast   Mi.17.02.1999 18.30 
Delphi-Filmpalast      Fr.19.02.1999 14.15 
Arsenal                Sa.20.02.1999 21.15 
Akademie der Künste    So.21.02.1999 12.00 

Mr. Mograbi Avi Mograbi, a documentary filmmaker, is hired by a TV producer to make a film about the celebrations surrounding Israel’s 50th anniversary. The producer is tuned in to the media, and his mood swings accordingly. When the unemployment crisis breaks out, he washes his hands of the anniversary film and seeks to make a penetrating, socially engaged film instead. During the newly awakened Gulf crisis the producer shuts himself away behind polyethylene sheets, gas-mask on. At this point he is not interested in making a film at all. In the meantime a Palestinian film-producer from the Palestinian Authority makes contact with Mograbi. The Palestinians, too, mark the 50th anniversary – of the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem – the Nakba (catastrophe). He asks Mograbi to help him out in producing a film about the Nakba. He wants him to shoot locations that used to be Palestinian and became Jewish settlements following the 1948 War. He only wants pictures of places, no interviews nor events. Just places, houses, ruins, signs of life lost. Mograbi also tells the camera a story about himself, a story involving the purchase of a lot in the outskirts of the city, with the intention of building a small house to improve the quality of living, fulfill the Israeli Dream. This optimistic project turns into a sheer nightmare. The film ends on the eve of Israel’s Independence Day. People are celebrating in the streets. The Palestinians in the Occupied Territories mark the ‘Al Nakba’. Fireworks light up the sky. Palestinian protesters are shot dead by Israeli soldiers. Mograbi sits at home and finishes the telling of the three parallel stories.