Favorite Interviews
MAYOR: powerful, entertaining and funny – a documentary film by David Osit
Mayor – Film maker David Osit – credit photo ZFF
Ramallah appears as a totally modern city with a lot of potential for tourism. Part of the film shows the mayor being against a new marketing concept and branding for Ramallah. Later we witness that the logo WeRamallah is being approved.
Hadid has to put up with many political rebellions in his city. One example is when in December 2017 American President Donald Trump decided to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s new capital. Palestinians started protesting and the Israeli soldiers violently attacked the protestors. In Ramallah there are often crossfires initiated by Israeli troops and the mayor needs to protect himself from stray bullets and tear gas.
One cannot but love the film of David Osit. The film director managed to convey besides the dramatic tone in the background, a humorous angle to this powerful production.
We met with the filmmaker David Osit just the day before he had arrived from the United States.
The film director’s motivations regarding the theme and the entire production:
Meeting with US film maker at ZFF – credit photo Vivamost
David Osit worked on and off in the Middle East during a decade and spent some time in Ramallah during the editing of a film by Mohanad Yaqubi called Off Frame. During his time there, he was struck by the visible changes that the city underwent since his previous visit there. He noticed, among other things, the new coffee shops, night clubs, jaguar dealerships and the free Wi-Fi. He thought Ramallah is not at all what Westerners would think of it. No deserts, no camels and snow during winter.
When Yaqubi came to New York to present his film, they had time to talk and David could not resist asking questions about the mayor of Ramallah. He was interested in what kind of person he was in real life. Yaqubi answered that “he is a charismatic, funny man, vaping e-cigarettes throughout town.”
From that day on, Osit wanted to find out what it’s like to be the mayor of Ramallah. How does Musa Hadid run his city without a country and how does he manage to do that, despite the Palestine occupation? He wanted to show Ramallah through the mayor’s eyes, how he wanted his city to be successful and the people to be proud of it. It was important to show the positive and negative sides as well.
The filming:
The filming lasted about 18 months. Osit would commute back and forth, spending 4 to 5 weeks at a time. As an American citizen he was able to enter Palestine without a problem. No visa is needed for American citizens as Palestine is occupied by Israel. Then he would go back home to edit his footage and raise some money.
Osit did pretty much everything on his own from cinematography, editing, directing and producing. Editing took a huge amount of time due to the 350hrs footage!
He documented office conversations and very intricate elements on how to run a city. There were both humorous parts and dramatic moments. There were certainly plenty of moments filled with real-life dangers during the shooting but the film director said that at that time he was more concentrated on the process rather than being aware of the danger, thinking more of how he was going to have enough battery on his camera and enough memory card to finish the day.
Mayor – Film maker David Osit – credit photo ZFF
He wanted to show things from a completely different perspective. He didn´t want to reiterate what already had been presented by other filmmakers. He was not interested either in portraying exclusively the violence and terror that engulfs a city. He wanted to stress as well, that it is extremely problematic to run a city under occupation. He wanted to be different and he wanted to do that also by adding a humorous touch. Osit believes “Comedy has a great way to relate to people.”
About Musa Hadid and his relationship with Osit
Musa studied civil engineering, He is Christian. Moreover every mayor of the city has to be Christian because historically Ramallah is a Christian city.
For David Osit Musa has a great sense of humour. He is pragmatic and has a sense of calmness and the ability to seek balance, which are invaluable assets for his job. Musa has a very difficult position as so many people want something from him and rely on him in order to fix things. In addition he has no control over the borders or the sewage facilities. He is constantly dealing with a great deal of external pressure.
Mayor – Film maker David Osit – credit photo ZFF
Osit showed the mayor and his family the film during a private screening.
He told us that Hadid loved it and to him that was a relief, adding that it would have been a shock to him if Musa didn´t like it. For him it would have meant that he had made a serious error and definitely would have triggered a sense of failure. “The film was made with him and not about him.”
When he met Hadid for the first time he told him he wanted to make a film about him, featuring him for a period of two years. “You are going to like me, I am not going to be a journalist, who shows up and then he just leaves, we are going to get to know each other,” he shared during the Q&A. For Osit it was crucial to be able to gain Musa’s trust. It was a prerequisite, in order for the film to be successful. Over the years they developed a strong friendship.
The film at the cinemas:
MAYOR came out in March in the USA before the pandemic. The first of over 42 (at the time we spoke) film festivals where it was screened was True/False festival in Columbia, Missouri in the United States. It was also shown in Hamburg, Berlin, Warsaw, Toronto, Melbourne and in Norway.
Why did he want to become a film director?
He was studying refugee law in Cairo but after realizing he could not be his best version in this profession, he decided not to pursue it after all. Making films is different, because he can use his creativity. He said that many other filmmakers wanted to do something completely different at first and he gave as an example Scorsese, who initially wanted to be a priest.
He makes films because he has a question he wants to explore and not a point he wants to make.
His future films:
David Osit sees himself doing further documentaries. Following people and reflecting on the complexity of what drives them is very exciting to him. He is particularly interested in telling stories that have been rarely told and he wants to make an impact by an innovative mindset, one that is inclined towards thinking out of the box. Documentaries are perfect for that kind of imaginative setting but of course he would also be open to do a feature film, if the right opportunity would come.
We were extremely excited to have met him at the Meet & Greet of the film festival and we are looking forward to seeing more of his films in the future. He certainly managed to catch our attention.
About the author
Véronique Gray is French. She has lived most of her life outside of France and was an expat in Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich and Atlanta. She has called Zurich her home since 2006. She is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Vivamost since 2009. She is an entrepreneur, who opened her first business at the age of 25. After a BA in history and graduating with honours from the University of Atlanta, she later studied journalism. She has been published in various magazines in Great Britain, Canada, France and the USA. In 2015 she opened another business in America while continuing to run Vivamost. When she is not writing, you can find her painting, a passion she found later in life. So today when she travels she can’t leave without a pencil or her brushes.
Contribution: Orsolya Farkas
