The Gatekeepers

This week, The Gatekeepers, directed by Dror Moreh and produced by Phillipa Kowarsky, which has been winning attention and accolades internationally, won the U.S. National Society of Film Critics' award for best documentary! 

The film is important for its provocative look at Israel's security or intelligence agency, the Shin Bet, which is charged with keeping us safe by dealing with Israel's war on terror.  All six living former heads of this agency talk candidly on camera about their hard decisions and controversial actions while head of the agency. The six are: Avi Dichter, Avraham Shalom, Yuval Diskin, Jacob Peri, Carmi Gillon, and Ami Ayalon.

The Gatekeepers  which premiered at the Jerusalem Film Festival (July 2012) is feature-length (95 minutes) and is available from Cinephil.

In a review which appeared in The Times of Israel (an on-line Israeli newspaper), David Horovitz wrote:

"For his dark, provocative documentary The Gatekeepers, director Dror Moreh secured interviews with all six living ex-chiefs of the Shin Bet domestic intelligence service. And he achieved that dark, provocative impact neither by sensationalist distortion of their comments nor by camera trickery — although the film includes rare and powerful footage of counter-terror operations. He simply allowed those veteran intelligence chiefs, speaking to camera in separate, intercut interviews, to discuss their roles, the particular challenges that dominated their time in office, and their conclusions about Israel’s fight against Palestinian and, for some of them, Jewish terrorism." (The Times of Israel, July 12, 2012)

See the entire article at The Times of Israel