“The Act of Listening Requires a Sort Of Surrender to the Narrative of the Other”: Ofra Bloch on Afterward

Born in Jerusalem but based in NYC, Ofra Bloch is a longtime psychoanalyst, an expert in trauma, who’s been making short documentaries for the past decade. Which makes her the perfect guide on the unconventional cinematic journey that is her feature-length debut Afterward. The film follows the director on her own healing excursion, from Germany to Israel and Palestine, in an effort to understand the mindset of those brought up with the tag of victim or victimizer — or in her case both. In Germany Bloch, whose great uncle lost his wife and children in the Holocaust, meets directly, one on one, with the children of SS officers and even a former neo-Nazi. While in Israel and the Occupied territories the setup is the same. Bloch engages in intimate conversations with everyday Palestinian men and women who were raised to hate her as she was raised to loathe the Germans (and fear those who now sit right across from her and in front of her lens). It’s both a revelatory social experiment and a profile in courageous vulnerability.

Filmmaker was fortunate to catch up with Bloch a few days before the film’s January 10th theatrical release.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.