Israeli actress Hanna Laslo won the Best Actress award (Prix d'Interpretation Feminine) for her role in Israeli director Amos Gitai's film entry "Free Zone" at the 58th Cannes Film Festival. Laslo described the movie as touching political subjects, but with humor, through people.
On being awarded the prize, she dedicated it to her mother, a Holocaust survivor of Auschwitz, to all Holocaust survivors still living today, and to the victims of the Middle East conflict, both Israeli and Palestinian. "This is a film with a lot of hope," she said, "a journey of three women in the Middle East, in which I represent the Israeli side. Hanna ben Moshe, the character I portray, is also the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, and at one point in the film she says, 'All of us want to survive.' That is the message of the film. It's high time we come together and try to work out solutions to this problem."
"Free Zone" starts with the meeting of two women: Rebecca, an American (Nathalie Portman) who has been living in Jerusalem for a few months, has just broken off her engagement. She gets into a cab driven by Hanna, an Israeli. But Hanna is on her way to the Free Zone east of the Jordan, where customs and tax regulations are waived, to pick up a large sum of money that "the American", her husband's partner, owes them. Rebecca persuades Hanna to take her along. When they reach the Free Zone, Leila, a Palestinian (portrayed by Hiam Abbass), explains that the American isn't there and that the money has vanished....
Amos Gitai said he made this feature because he was interested in "these pockets of freedom in the Middle East where people of different origins can mingle and find things they can do in common. The barriers which divide the Middle East are both physical and mental. I see the film as offering a bridge which makes it possible to cross these borders without seeing the hatred, the wariness, although it does allow you to see that there are divisions within the societies, and not only between the societies. A bridge that would show that in the Middle East, you have to make use of little scraps of cooperation, and not necessarily concentrate on big ideas. Instead, we have to cling to the little daily events which bring people together."
Free Zone marks Israeli cineaste Amos Gitai's fourth visit to the Cannes Festival competition, his preceding selections were Kadosh (1999), Kippur (2000), and Kedma (2002).