The prestigious filmmaker Michael Winterbottom presents at FICX the Spanish premiere of Shoshana, a film with which the director connects the past and present of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from the time of the British Mandate of Palestine: «a part of history that is little talked about when it comes to British colonialism».

_{Shoshana by Michael Winterbottom}

The English director takes an increasingly critical view of Britain’s colonial history: «I have never seen the British as heroes, especially in the 1920s and 1930s in Palestine. In a general way the question is: why would any colonial power have the right to go into a territory and decide what is going to happen to those people and how they have to live? For me the strongest parallel in this era is that of the US with Iraq, Iran or Afghanistan. The colonialist mistake that Britain made a hundred years ago is now being replaced by the US».

_{Michael Winterbottom}

The film shows the repercussions of the escalation of political violence in the late 1930s. He does so by placing at the center of the film the true relationship that existed between Shoshana Borochov, daughter of one of the founders of the Zionist Labor movement, and Thomas Wilkin, an officer of the British intelligence service.

To document his work, the director conducted extensive research of the British and Israeli archives: «we edited a version of the film with only the archives and that allowed us to insert the context without having to add overly explanatory dialogue». Another artistic decision that Shoshana used to give the film credibility was to shoot in the Italian region of Apulia, similar to Tel-Aviv at the time.

Regarding the latest events in Palestine, a conflict whose political solution is not coming, she says: «I know a lot of people in Gaza. Everything that is happening is terrible. Precisely the character of Shoshana reflects that there were people with an ideal of a solution and political dialogue but in the end, even she herself, ends up taking part in the armed struggle».

_{Michael Winterbottom}