This is meant to be like a postcard, like an idealized image of Holland looking at it from Tel Aviv with 35 degrees and 95% humidity! Ari's friend, this guy Carmi, got away from the war and from the Middle East so Holland has to be this kind of paradise. We even had the tulips! It's a self-consciously touristy shot. The colours are over-the-top.

My artistic inspirations here are by association influenced by the technique I was using at the time for newspaper illustration, because I have to work very fast. I went back to doing that after the film and I'm used to these deadlines where I have to come up with an effective image very fast. In my editorial stuff I do something much more stylized, influenced by my discovery of illustrators who worked for a magazine called Simplissimus, Simplissimus was published in the early part of the 20th century in Germany and all the best artists from Europe came to work there.