On the closing night of the Goa International Film Festival in India, one of its highlights arrived, at the Asian premiere of the first episode from the fourth season of the series “Fauda”, when its creators Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff were enthusiastically received by the audience, in the company of Netflix executives and local stars.
Raz and Vishchakroff promised to develop additional series in collaboration with local producers, as part of what the Indian Minister of Information defined as a production alliance between India and Israel. Raz was impressed by the reception of the audience and the proficiency he showed in the series. “This is a great honor for us and a sign of things to come. We are very interested in this relationship,” he said.
‘Peace. We love you’, the Minister of Information of India called in Hebrew to the Israeli delegation to the festival, when “Fauda” people took the stage of the closing ceremony, to hear the praises of cooperation with Israel to the applause of the audience.
A local version of “Fauda” has already come out this year in India. Its name is “Grape” and it takes place in Kashmir, the main place of conflict between the Hindus and the Muslims.
In this context, the film “Kashmir Cases”, which deals with the case of a brutal massacre by Muslims of thousands of local Hindus, is a great success in India. “This is our holocaust,” a senior industrialist told Maariv. Opponents of the film say that it is being used by India’s nationalist government and is re-igniting inter-communal tensions in the country.
The admiration for Israel also involves the nationalist tone that occupies a place in politics and in the Indian public, in what appears to be a common struggle against the Muslims. Sesh Adibi, the screenwriter and lead actor in the film “The Major”, about the life and death of a commander in the Indian counter-terrorism unit during the terrorist attack in Mumbai in 2008, says he received enthusiastic responses from Israel, where they saw the film on Netflix.
The Holocaust motif is at the center of the Iranian film “World War III”, which has already won prizes at the Venice Film Festival and which centers on a man who plays the role of Adolf Hitler in an Iranian film against the background of the Holocaust and the concentration and extermination camps. The Iranian staff members told “Maariv” that the Holocaust means nothing to the Iranian public today.