The Belle from Gaza

If you were to pick two topics to make a documentary about at the moment, then you’d be hard-pressed to pick ones more likely to send people apoplectic than Israel/Palestine and transgender rights.

From the title of The Belle from Gaza, French documentarian Yolande Zauberman appears to have done just that. But she hasn’t. Filmed over almost five years in Tel Aviv, so starting long before the 7^th October attacks on Israel sparked its war in Gaza, The Belle from Gaza has very little direct to say about that conflict.

It is about the lives of transgender women – but specifically the lives of Arab-Israeli or Palestinian transwomen living in Israel. It also does so with minimal narration – meaning when it addresses transgender rights, it does so via inference from the experiences of the particular transwomen concerned.

The title refers to “The Belle of Gaza” a possibly mythical transwoman rumoured to have been born a boy in Gaza, who walked to Tel Aviv to realise their dream of living as a woman.

Zauberman set out to find “The Belle” with little more to go on than a fuzzy phone picture and combs the streets of Tel Aviv to find her chosen white whale.

Its leading light is Talleen Abu Hanna – an Arab-Israeli who in 2016 was crowned the first-ever Miss Trans Israel in 2016. Sadly, she is the only person featured who truly seems to have found happiness and acceptance. The others featured, Nathalie, Danielle, Israela and Nadine, talk grimly of their fears as sex workers, of brutal family rejection and wrestling with their different religious and gender identities.

One difficulty is that simply using a stream of edited interviews alongside other shots of the darker side of Tel Aviv provides little through-line to follow.

Many of the subjects are also by their very nature less than reliable narrators – not because one disbelieves their experiences and beliefs. But because they have very good reasons not to be open books given life on the streets, family fears and the fact that those who might be Palestinian rather than Israeli could face deportation.

If Zauberman did meet The Belle of Gaza, the Belle would be loath to admit it.

That said, there something important at the core of the film – that all of its subjects are on their own quest to be loved by someone or a family for who they are. Without wishing to sound like Hal David and Burt Bacharach, love is something there is evidently just too little of at the moment.

Mark Worgan

The Belle from Gaza does not have a UK release date yet.

Read more reviews from our Cannes Film Festival 2024 coverage here.

For further information about the event visit the Cannes Film Festival website here.