Seven Jewish women tell stories of immigrating, and adjusting, from Arab and North African countries to the middle of the Israeli desert in the 1950s and 1960s.
What is your personal connection to Dimona? What drew you to tell these stories?
In the years after Israel's independence in 1948, over one million Jews immigrated to the new state. Since then, Israeli Jewish society is divided [between] Jews who came from Europe (Ashkenazi Jews) and Jews who came from Arab Countries (Mizrahi Jews). Jews who came from the Arab world claim they were discriminated against, exploited and oppressed by the Israeli European-origin establishment which absorbed them. This explosive debate heavily influences the Israeli government, policies, and culture to this day. I wanted to finally approach immigrants from that generation to find out what really happened. One of the solutions of the 1950’s mass immigration was to build immigrant towns in the Negev desert in the South of Israel. When I started to research for archival films, I found out that very little footage exists from the period, but there were two propaganda films made by the Israeli authorities about the establishment of Dimona.