Advocate (2019)

Lea Tsemel is often called the Devil’s Advocate: among clients whom she defends in Israeli courts are Palestinian rebels and radicals. She often loses her cases, but she cannot abandon her mission to advocate for human rights: everyone has the right to be represented by an attorney in court, regardless of national bias. This thought makes the film Advocate (which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in the United States) relevant on a global level: in our days hysterical public opinion readily condemns a person to be guilty without waiting for the bang of the gavel.

The heroine is charismatic to such an extent that at first, the film seems to be not a documentary, but a feature in which the role of the human rights activist is performed by a popular actress. But this story is true as can be, and it is also more complicated than it seems at first sight: Tsemel’s voice-over narration tells of her past, which had close ties with the Arab-Israeli conflict itself, as well as Matspen, the radical left movement of the 1960s.