77th Cannes Film Festival: ‘An enigma about a trans woman who ran from Gaza’

Few films linked to the Gaza war are screening in this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Despite its title, “The Belle of Gaza”, a documentary out of competition, bears little relation to the conflict. The film by French director Yolande Zauberman follows the struggles and dreams of Palestinian trans women in Tel Aviv. Pro-Palestinian activists have in the past accused Israel of pink-washing, or showing off its tolerance to the LGBTQ community to coat over its human rights abuses in the occupied Palestinian territories. Israela and Talleen Abu Hanna, who in the film recount their stories respectively as Jewish and Arab trans women in Israel, spoke to FRANCE 24’s Juliette Montilly and Nina Masson.