Elinor AGAM BEN-DAVID

A rare and fascinating insight into the mind of a female terrorist. A multimedia event from Israel, run as a police Investigation - interrogation, which should, after suspenseful, dense and highly intense sixty minutes, deliver at least some of the answers to the burning questions:

What caused Samira, a religious and law-abiding woman of 50, to try to explode herself in a crowded café?

Was it deep religious persuasion and nationalistic ideology? Was it her low status, as a woman, in a religious patriarchal society? Or did she make a fatal "mistake" that she was forced to "atone" for?

Samira is caught when the mission she's involved in takes a wrong turn and has to be confronted with the harsh reality of her life, which unfolds as the interrogation delves deeper.

The play deals with women's low status in a society growing more fanatically religious by the day, a world in which people recruit God to strengthen and excuse their personal and political interests.

The investigators contradict or emphasize her statements with

filmed testimonies of her close family and friends, screened before her. The audience, together with the investigators, put together the amazing puzzle of Samira's life and motives.

The play is based on extensive research, including interviews with “Mosad” and secret service experts from Israel. Anat Barzilay

herself, the writer and leading performer of “Samira”, served in

The Israeli army (air force) in her youth, as most Israeli girls are

required to, but her fascination with this story is on a personal level, as a woman and a mother, and not political, as a Jewish Israeli citizen.