Biladi, une révolution (1970)

Zürich was snowed under on February 18, 1969. In the afternoon, a white VW stops at a parking space on the edge of Kloten Airport. Three men and one woman, activists of the PFLP-People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine, are inside. Around pm, a Boeing 720 B of the Israeli company El Al is in front of the vehicle, waiting to take off for Tel Aviv. Two activists then get out of the VW and fire automatic weapons towards the cockpit: six passengers are wounded, the pilot will die 5 weeks later in a hospital in Zurich. The Israeli security guard on board manages to get out of the plane and cross the fence that separates it from the Palestinians. He shoots and kills one of the PFLP militants. The Israeli officer and the Palestinian commando are arrested. The Swiss authorities “strongly condemn“ the actions of the assassins. December 1969, end of the trial: the three Palestinian militants are sentenced to 12 years in prison, the Mossad officer is acquitted. Demonstrations follow in Switzerland. A rift is formed between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian activists. Switzerland is accused of siding with Israel. Shocked by this situation, Francis Reusser, a filmmaker, and Jean-Pierre Garnier, a young director at TSR, contact the head of Fatah in Geneva. He is willing to support an information project - a report and a film - carried out with Fatah activists in the refugee camps in Jordan. Francis Reusser on camera, Jean-Pierre Garnier on sound and Armand Deriaz as photographer fly to Jordan at the beginning of April 1970. Supported by Freddy Buache of the Swiss Cinematheque and Charles-Henri Favrod, director of CADIA-Communauté d’action pour le développement de l’information audio-visuelle, the project takes shape: the film Biladi, une révolution and the book “Guerre du Peuple“ are released at the end of 1970. Like a political tract, the film exalts the Palestinian revolution through the role of the combattants, women, workers and children. Revolutionary songs and poems punctuate the people’s struggle for liberation. This film defends a cause that was very little supported at that time. ’Biladi, une révolution’ is one of the very first (if not the first) films on the issue.