Emmanuel Benbihy’s Cities of Love took us to The City of Lights in Paris, Je t’Aime, The Big Apple in New York, I Love You and now it’s on to the Holy Land. The Jerusalem edition will follow in its predecessors’ footsteps by stringing together several segments created by well-known directors using the universal theme of encountering love.
According to THR, the directorial roster will include three Israelis, three Americans and four from other countries. Scott Berrie of Creative Productions LLC, the company that attained the license and is co-producing the film noted, “The Israeli directors we choose will represent the population of Jerusalem whether they be Jewish or Palestinian.” The goal of the film is to portray the citizens of Jerusalem as accurately as possible and represent all religions and national objectives. Berrie explained he is aware that the war will be occurring in the background, but it will not be the focus of the film.
It’s hard to imagine a film aiming to depict the real lives of the citizens of Jerusalem without the conflict being in the forefront, but shooting won’t begin until the spring of 2011 so let’s keep our fingers crossed that a minimal portrayal of the war will accurately reflect its status at the time. It’ll take a while to get the ball rolling on this project because Benbihy has two other installments he’ll be working on. First, Rio, I Love You in the spring of 2010, then Shanghai, I Love You in the fall. Rio is expected to be in theaters in early 2011, then Shanghai in late 2011 followed by Jerusalem in early 2012.
Benbihy produced both Paris and New York and will do so for Shanghai, but will only act as executive producer for Rio and Jerusalem. He said, "I've created a guide of more than 400 pages that explains everything there is to know about organizing production for this specific format." Just in case Benbihy’s instruction manual does not suffice, he’ll be on-call to help should any problems arise. Benbihy also hopes to bring the series to the Internet in a short film format, but licensing issues will keep that from happening for at least another three years.
