Yitzhak Rabin : Chronicle of an Assassination Foretold

Last year, architect-turned-filmmaker Amos Gitai directed Rabin, the Last Day, an investigation into the assassination, on November 4, 1995, of the Israeli Prime Minister, after a demonstration for peace and against violence in Tel-Aviv. The assassination cast a cold and brutal light on a dark and terrifying world—a world that made murder possible, as it suddenly became apparent to a traumatised public. For the Cour d'honneur of the Palais des papes, using the memories of Leah Rabin, the Prime Minister's widow, as a springboard, Amos Gitai has created a “fable” devoid of formality and carried by an exceptional cast. Four voices brought together to create a recitative, “halfway between lament and lullaby,” to travel back through History and explore the incredible violence with which the nationalist forces fought the peace project, tearing Israel apart. Four voices caught “like in an echo chamber,” between image-documents and excerpts from classic and contemporary literature—that bank of memory that has always informed the filmmaker's understanding of the world. For us, who let the events of this historic story travel through our minds, reality appears as a juxtaposition of fragments carved into our collective memory.

Text Amos Gitai and Marie-José Sanselme
Direction Amos Gitai
Lights Jean Kalman
Music Jean-Sébastien Bach, Claudio Monteverdi, Györgi Ligeti
Chorale direction Johan Riphagin

Avec Hiam Abbass, Sarah Adler and the musicians Edna Stern (piano), Sonia Wieder-Atherton (cello), the Lubéron chorale and the video maker Einat Weitzman

Production Agav Films
In partnership with RFI, France 24 and Monte Carlo Doualiya

The show will be broadcast on France Culture, the July 10 at 22:00.