There are a number of films about Palestine-Israel conflict that were presented in the program of Venice Film Festival '68, but Yolande Zauberman's Would You Have Sex with an Arab? brings the issue to the new heights. Similar on the edge of parody to Shlomi Elkabetz's film Testimony, presented in the Venice Days selection of the festival, Would You Have Sex with an Arab? (Orizzonti) is also a series of informal "testimonies" that push the boundaries of our traditional perception of the conflict. The film is a controversial vox pop carried out in several cities of Israel: a brilliant orchestration of interviews with people who all answer the same question posed by the author - "Would you have sex with an Arab?" The simple and straightforward question confuses, offends, lays bare their prejudices, makes them reflect upon and reconsider things that they always believed to be taboo. It uncovers their hanker for the forbidden fruit, provokes daring confessions about their sexual experiences and reveals a certain degree of open-mindness in modern Israeli society. The author made sexual identity of the interviewees confront their national identity, thus helping many of them to make a first step towards freeing themselves from the sexual repression of nationalist nature. The film makes sex a political issue, at some points almost bringing back the end of the 1960s and presenting sex as a way to reconcile and achieve peace. Zauberman chose to interview people during night time as if implying that anything becomes possible under cover of night, even peace between Palestine and Israel, however the film is not a statement of the author's belief in bright future. The question still remains open as the film's title appears on the screen in large font in the end, as if the addressed by the author to the public, who have not managed to evade the controversial question and are also invited to answer it. So, would you have sex with an Arab?
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