In new docuseries, dynamic interviews meet stunning Israeli landscapes – all filmed by drone

In his new documentary web series “Through the Land,” award-winning filmmaker Eli Katzoff takes viewers along on a series of visually stunning “walk and talk” conversations with the people shaping Israel today, filmed in some of the modern-day Holy Land’s most stunning and iconic locations.

The 12-part series, produced in cooperation with The Times of Israel, covers subjects such as the shifting geopolitical landscape on the Syrian border, the fight against human trafficking in Tel Aviv, and the astronomy of the night sky at the international Dark Sky Park in Israel’s Negev Desert.

With no studio or script, each episode combines the best of cutting-edge cinematography with deep-dive interview journalism, offering an immersive visual experience where the story is told with more than words.

“If we’re doing an episode on, say, the Dead Sea water level drop, we’re filming it at the Dead Sea, and you see the sink holes and the destruction of the tourism industry with the collapsed resorts,” Katzoff told The Times of Israel in an interview ahead of the series release.

And while the series explores elements of Israel’s ongoing multi-front war, that is far from the focus, as the team reports on facets of the country viewers won’t find in the headlines.

“So much of the conversation these days is around the war. Every headline is about the war, it’s the main topic of interest, and Israel is so much more than just the war,” Katzoff said. “This is really about the conflicts that don’t always get the coverage — at least the front page coverage.”

Since the Hamas-led invasion that forever changed the face of Israel on October 7, 2023, Katzoff has produced over 30 short documentaries on the unfolding events in the Jewish state, capturing compelling narratives with depth and cinematic power in ToI’s “Times of War” series.

In “Through the Land,” Katzoff invites everyone, from the casually curious to the deeply invested, to grapple with Israel’s complexities.

“This is really for anyone who has an interest in the country and what’s going on currently, and I know that sounds extremely broad and almost a little bit vague, but that was the whole idea,” Katzoff said. “To engage in our series, it’s not a prerequisite to be an expert in the goings-on within Israel, and I can’t say that for a lot of stuff that I see out there.”

“We’re talking to a huge range of people and topics,” he said. “We did an episode with first responders at ground zero where an Iranian ballistic missile hit — not because we wanted to report on the devastation, but because we wanted to put a spotlight on the people who show up over and over, whenever lives are at risk, and they have incredible insights to share.”

But Katzoff said the debut episode, an interview with freed hostages Aviva and Keith Siegel, who were kidnapped by terrorists on October 7, might have been the most moving for him to film.

“I’ve heard a lot of short interviews about what it’s like to be a hostage in Gaza, but very few have spoken in detail and at length about their experience publicly,” Katzoff said.

“What is really incredible is the amazing amount of detail that came out in these longer conversations,” he said. “Not just the horror stories — Keith spoke at length about Hamas’s attempts to convert him, over and over and over. Aviva speaks about how they were physically moved into tunnels and what it means to go into a tunnel, how you are brought in.”

In the series, Katzoff pioneers drone-based cinematography to revolutionize visual podcasting, putting “Through the Land” at the intersection of journalism, technology and filmmaking.

“What we’re doing is completely unique,” Katzoff said. “As far as we can tell — and we’ve done some research — we’re the only ones in the world to use this technology in this way. We are filming these episodes outside, using only drones as our cameras, and we’re doing it in an active war zone.”