Director's Statement:

I grew up in Finland with two absences: a biological father I had never met, and a country I had never set foot in, yet held a right of return to. For years, I kept both at a distance, until the questions left unasked caught up with me. My father might remain absent, but a relationship with the place was within my reach. Birthright grew from the decision to go towards it rather than look away. The search soon led to my mother: I took her to Israel, to the kibbutz where she had worked as a 19-year-old Finnish volunteer, more than forty years earlier.

In Birthright, absence isn’t a gap to fill but material to work with. The film moves from the intimate to the public: from a mask in place of a face and a Hebrew children’s book never read, now read aloud, to a Netanyahu protest sign and a demonstration where the many Israeli protests of the 2020s meet. Israel was never a neutral inheritance. Yet in 2023, the ground beneath it shifted. Surrounded by slogans, I came to see the film’s task as the opposite: to hold nuance, contradiction and uncomfortable honesty. Proximity felt more authentic than protest from afar. I didn’t choose my inheritance, but I’m choosing what I make of it.

Julia Granat Utotila