I’d like to revisit your filmography. Beyond Tyra Banks, how did you move from the Demjanjuk documentary to The Devil Next Door, and from Operation Paperclip to the Bin Laden film? 

Dan: Me and my partner and wife—we’ve been doing political and historical documentaries for 20 years. We did Censored Voices about the Six-Day War and The Oslo Diaries about the peace accords between Israel and Palestine. We’ve done lots of political films.

Then we started working with Netflix, trying to make history into something that is not for history lovers—it’s for people who would never tune in to see a film about the Second World War but would want to see true crime. We want to bring the big topics we care about in an entertaining way—so people come back from work, watch the documentary not as something highbrow but as something compelling. And then the debate stays with them.

With Top Model, it’s exactly the same. From the outside, it looks fun. It’s colorful. It’s full of gossip. It talks about pop culture. But when you let it sink in, it raises stories about body image, sexual misconduct—call it rape, call it sexual harassment. It talks about the entertainment world we live in today, where you tune in to see someone being humiliated on television.

For us it’s always about that—how to tell a story that is exciting, compelling, engaging, with twists and turns, without feeling like a lecture, but raising bigger issues. We never give answers. With Operation Paperclip—the recruitment of Nazi scientists—we didn’t say whether it was good or bad. It’s a conversation for the viewers to have.

Right now there are tens of thousands of TikTok and Instagram videos debating the legacy of America’s Next Top Model. That’s the point.

It began with Demjanjuk as well — the idea of allowing viewers to decide for themselves whether the trial was a success or a failure.

Dan: Exactly. And we had the same feeling with Bin Laden. He was shot in the head—some people thought it was triumphal. Others said, what the hell, they put his body in the Indian Ocean, he should have been put on trial.

You give back to the spectator the liberty to form their own opinion. The whole war on terror is one big contentious topic. Even in our Middle East films, we always want people to have the conversation.

Personally, I thought the Tyra Banks story was more complex. On one hand, the models were humiliated and treated wrong—100 percent. Nothing changes that. But on the other hand, Tyra Banks is the only person who did reality TV who was asked to say sorry.

When you look at Survivor, nobody went to Jerry Bruckheimer and asked if it was nice for the people on the island. It obviously wasn’t—it was humiliating and horrifying. But no one held him to a higher standard. It was entertainment.

When you look at Simon Cowell from Britain’s Got Talent, nobody asked whether he ruined someone’s hopes by humiliating them. Tyra is the only person who had to answer for that. It doesn’t let her off the hook. But it’s not a coincidence that she’s the only woman.

If you’re a woman, you need to be muscly and soft, and do good for the world. If you’re a man, you can just do entertainment. That’s an interesting conversation to have. I don’t know the answers, but I’m eager for people to have it.

The movie doesn’t end with the credits. It instigates a snowball of conversations. That’s our goal.

What was the reaction to the Tyra Banks documentary series? The press was extensive and the audience numbers were substantial.

Dan: It was crazy. We expected people to watch it because it’s fun and people are interested in America’s Next Top Model. It was a big part of many people’s childhoods and adulthoods. It’s a cultural phenomenon.

But thousands of people posting videos? I never expected that. People are extremely engaged.

How do you explain that level of engagement?

Dan: Most political films don’t change people’s minds. If we made a film critical of the Israeli occupation, liberals thought it was great and conservatives thought it was horrible. No one said, “I watched your documentary and it changed everything I ever thought.”

But there are rare films that do create dissonance—like Super Size Me about McDonald’s, or Blackfish about SeaWorld. People watched those and something shifted.

With Operation Paperclip, people didn’t know the story, but nobody thinks Nazis are great people. With America’s Next Top Model, people had good memories. They knew it wasn’t nice, but they never thought their watching it was part of the problem.

They remembered body shaming, but didn’t fully grasp how extreme it was. How painful it was backstage. Many viewers entered as fans and left differently. You don’t often see that kind of radical shift.

What reaction struck you the most?

Dan: The Instagram trend where people talk about traumatic experiences and how the show manipulated them—forcing someone afraid of water to shoot in water, for example. Thousands of videos. People put real effort into them.

For me, that’s beautiful. When we started making movies, it felt aristocratic—you needed money, cinemas, festivals like Cannes. You needed someone to open gates.

Now thousands of people are not asking permission. They’re creating amazing content. Taking control of media.

And I think it connects to what America’s Next Top Model did. Before the internet, models were mysterious figures on Vogue or Dior posters. You didn’t know them. They were unattainable.

Tyra Banks said: forget perfect. We’ll show you without makeup. With bad skin. Crying. Arguing. Being humiliated. That was anti-fashion.

People loved watching the backstage—but many of those models didn’t find work later. They weren’t mysterious anymore.

Today, if you’re a model without Instagram, without showing your personality, nobody wants you. The show changed that. That’s its legacy.

You also made a documentary about a French cyberstalker, Ulcan. Do you still have contact with him?

Dan: No. That was years ago. I’d like to know how his trial ended. He was put on trial for second- or third-degree manslaughter.

But the situation with cyberharassment—and in the Middle East—is horrifying. As we speak, my family in Israel are in shelters. Israel has been going through a concerning change—more radicalized, more religious, more militant. The liberal Israel is shrinking. It’s heartbreaking.

You said recently that Israel is becoming Iran. That’s a strong statement.

Dan: It’s extremely hard to be an Israeli political filmmaker right now. We work with Netflix—we’re not Israeli filmmakers anymore—but someone like Hila Medalia is.

Israeli filmmakers are boycotted daily. The government pushes propaganda films, shuts down cinemas that show anti-government work. If an Arab director shows a film, there are demonstrations outside calling to stop it.

At the same time, internationally, Israeli filmmakers get no support. In the worst case, people say openly: we are boycotting you. In the quieter cases, festivals simply don’t program Israeli films.

Ten years from now, people may ask what happened to Israeli society. Why did it change? And there may be no documentation because Israeli filmmakers couldn’t film it.

Iranian filmmakers who smuggle films out are embraced. Israelis are not. That’s frightening.

What about directors like Avi Mograbi, Amos Gitai, Nadav Lapid?

Dan: They can film. But support is shrinking. A film critical of the government won’t receive funding. It won’t get a stage.

Most of our political films were supported by European money. Today, someone who wants to make a political film critical of the Israeli government can try—but without funding, without a platform.

Look at major festivals. The absence is visible.

Who, then, is supported by the Israeli government?

Dan: Anybody is allowed to make movies. That’s not the problem. The problem is what movies we make.

If I’m a political filmmaker, the Israeli government would be very happy for me to make movies — as long as you don’t say “occupation,” as long as you don’t talk about the other side, as long as you don’t criticize the army, as long as you don’t criticize the government.

If I did a film like that, people would say, “Okay, but we can’t broadcast it, or we definitely can’t give it money.” Then you want to show it outside, and people say, “No, you’re Israeli. We cannot show a film from Israel.”

Look at IDFA in Amsterdam. Look at how many Israeli films were there this year. The answer is zero. It’s crazy.

And again, I understand all sides. Anybody has the right to say, “I want to boycott whoever I want.” You can’t make people like you. But people need to understand that it’s really problematic. What will happen is the occupation will not end. It’s the documentation of the occupation that will end.

Israel is not going to be a peaceful nation in the coming years. But you won’t have anybody filming it, and the story will not be told.

Gregory Shelly, known as Ulcan, was sentenced in September 2024 to four years’ detention. He did not attend, correct?

Dan: No, I don’t think he attended. He’s been sentenced, but he’s not in jail. He’s in Israel.

So if he steps into Europe, he could be arrested?

Dan: He’s probably trapped in Israel forever or something like that. I don’t know anything more. But I remember those days very well. It was very significant and violent. It was all-time internet.

A thread runs through your films: the early internet era — 9/11, Bin Laden, Tyra Banks, Monica Lewinsky, Pamela Anderson — a moment of learning to wield a tool powerful enough to reach billions and destroy lives just as quickly.

Dan: It’s very interesting what you say. That period — the early internet — changed everything. The way we look at people. The way we humiliate people. The way we document things.

9/11 was early internet. Bin Laden’s arrest was early internet. Tyra Banks was early internet. Monica Lewinsky, Pamela Anderson — all of that.

It was a moment of learning how to use this massive tool. And often we used it in a savage way. Lives were destroyed. Narratives were shaped forever. My only wish is: “May everybody stop shooting at each other,” he says.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)