We bring up our sons to be heroes and then we send them off to war. A serious look at how one mother copes.

Another Israeli feature film that opened at the Jerusalem Film Festival this week --  

Oxygen, directed by Netalie Braun, is a hard-hitting and serious look at Israeli mothers and what they are forced to face when their sons go off to serve in the military. We bring up our sons to become soldiers and heroes, but worry frantically when they go to serve in wartime.

Netalie Braun is well-known for two previous major films -- 

• the award-winning documentary, The Hangman
• Metamorphosis, a film which combines documentary and video art.

Anat and her son Ido, who is a soldier in the Golani unit, have a very special relationship. They go swimming in the sea together and are planning a trip to India when he is discharged from the army.  Anat is the daughter of an army general. She teaches in an elementary school, where she teaches the children about the glory and heroism of the Six Day War.  She is obviously fully supportive of the Israel Defense Forces.

When her son is preparing to be part of a military ground incursion into Lebanon, something inside her snaps and she begins to panic that something will happen to her son.  We are all asked to make sacrifices, but Anat does not want to lose her son whom she loves more than anything. She sets out on a journey to the Lebanese border to find her son and bring him home. Not succeeding in that, she begins to hatch a plan in which she thinks she can save him.

There is a scene in the film in which Anat locks the front door of their apartment and hides the key so that Ido cannot leave the house and return to his unit. This scene reminded me of another Israeli film, Present Continuous (2012) directed by Aner Preminger, which was also about a woman in crisis who wants only to protect her children.

Oxygen provides a platform for a remarkable performance by Dana Ivgy as the mother, panicked about losing her son. Both the mother – from her crisis mindset – and the son – due to his asthma – seem to be in need of oxygen!  At this time of ongoing war, are the mothers of Israel capable of protecting their children?

Details about availability can be obtained from Aviv Ben Shlush, Producer at ZOA Films, aviv@zoafilms.com or Adi Bar Yosef, Producer at Baryo Productions, adibaryo@gmail.com

Cabaret Total is a hard-hitting anti-establishment war-weary film

I just returned from the Haifa Film Festival, where I had the opportunity to view a strong political film, Cabaret Total, מופע טוטאל, directed and starring Roy Assaf.  It is a film about freedom of speech, about corrupt politicians, and about not permitting yourself the luxury of hiding your head in the sand. Most of all, it is about the capacity of theater, specifically cabaret, to offer a form of critical social and political expression.  The filmmaker/lead actor, Roy Assaf, is a tremendously talented entertainer, appearing in just about every scene in the film. 

Assi is a combat soldier, just returning home from miluim (reserve duty).  Still in uniform, we watch him returning to the town in the desert where he lives with his wife, two children, and his parents.  Obviously somewhat disturbed by his recent experiences, he is imagining the sounds of war, the strafing and the bombs. It is apparent that he is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as do many Israeli soldiers when they come back from the wars.

Assi performs in a cabaret at the local community center, where they do talented and biting skits. He is also the drama teacher in the local high school, helping the seniors rehearse their concluding year play.  In a moment of tension, he shouts at his students that war isn’t so wonderful, in fact, if given the chance to do it over again, he wouldn’t want to do army service. This incident goes viral and he is dissed on social media and dismissed from his teaching job. Matters continue to spiral out of hand.

The issue of freedom of speech is particularly relevant in today’s Israel. Not only does the Ministry of Education try to control what teachers can and cannot say in the classroom, but other ministers and their staffs are watching people who say anything that is too critical of government policy, especially with regard to the current war in Gaza.  Also, social media is playing a negative role, which can lead to the shaming of anyone who expresses criticism of what is going on.

Notwithstanding the fact that the filmmaker talked about how it took him about seven years to make this film, I felt that this was the first anti-establishment, war-weary film to come out post October 7^th, 2023. It reflects a certain anger on the part of Israelis who are getting tired of fighting a corrupt government and fighting a forever war. In fact, in the press in Israel lately, there is more and more being written of soldiers dying in vain in an endless war, with no exit strategy.

Cabaret Total concludes with a fantastic scene reminiscent of Frederico Fellini’s masterpiece, 8 ½, with the parade of clown characters. This seems to be a nod to the absurdity of our current situation, in which theater can help us understand deeply some of the profound dilemmas with which we live and with which we struggle all the time.

Cabaret Total is available from Go2Films. 

 

 

 

A New Israeli Musical Film: Victory

 Victory (Hebrew title: The Victors המנצחים), directed by Eliran Peled, is a musical which takes place in the period following the Six Day War of 1967. The film is a parody about war, about bereavement, and about post-trauma. The musical style parodies the euphoria of the post Six Day War period.  The film uses a number of strategies to emphasize the parody – stylized sets, soundstage musical numbers, black and white period footage, some of which is shot with the actors in the scenes, and clips from an historical anti-war cabaret number (by Hanoch Levin) which was performed to an angry audience at Kibbutz Netzer Sereni in 1968.

Neta (Yael Stollman) is a kibbutznik who decides to leave the kibbutz, with her husband, to move to Tel Aviv to become an actress.  As her star rises, and she gets some big parts, her husband returns from the war with PTSD and her best friend’s husband is killed.  She becomes absorbed in his illness, but the euphoria after the great victory of the IDF in this war wins out.

The film was made last year, but is now showing in Israeli cinemas.  It was particularly difficult watching it during this period of the war in Gaza.  We are so far from being in a euphoric state at this time. Watching the soldiers in this film dancing and singing, seeing the suffering of one soldier with post trauma distress, viewing the brit of a baby born to a newly widowed woman, and watching the anti-war cabaret scene, were all difficult in these troubled times.

The Success of a Grassroots Movement

Within the framework of the streaming DOCAVIV festival, my husband, Ron, and I had the opportunity to view the documentary film Four Mothers, directed by Dana Keidar Levin and Rephael Levin.  This is the second film about Lebanon that we have seen this week in this festival, which confirms the fact that twenty years later, the withdrawal from Lebanon—and the ongoing crisis with our neighbor to the North – are very much on our minds, and certainly on the minds of Israeli filmmakers.

As is well-known within Israeli society, the term Four Mothers refers to two things. The first thing that it relates to is a movement of women which was formed in 1997 to try to end the War in Lebanon and force a unilateral withdrawal from the so-called security zone.  These women are generally credited with catalyzing the government to finally pullout all IDF soldiers from Lebanon, just over twenty years ago, in May 2000. The second reference is to the four matriarchs, as we sing in the popular Passover Seder song, Who Knows One? Four are the matriarchs, three are the patriarchs, two are the tablets, and one is God above the heaven and the earth! 

These women, not surprisingly, are strong and articulate figures—like their Biblical forebears-- who come across as passionate about their subject, even two decades later.  The film provides a fascinating look at what it meant for these remarkable women to create a mass movement from a small personal protest — while overcoming many major obstacles -- and to finally achieve their goal, which became the goal of Israeli society as well. Following the terrible tragedy of the crash of two IDF helicopters in February 1997, which killed more than 70 soldiers — the largest military accident in Israeli history -- Eran Shachar, a member of Kibbutz Palmachim, wrote a stirring op-ed in the kibbutz newspaper, demanding to understand why Israeli mothers sanctify the ritual of army sacrifice.  He asked “why don’t they stand up and shout: don’t take my son!” After this article appeared, Rachel Ben Dor, who became the best-known of the four women, contacted Shachar to tell him that she agreed with him.  He proposed a meeting with a small group of women who were like-minded.  It was just before the holiday of Passover, (hence the reference to the matriarchs), and thus a protest group was formed to try to get our soldiers out of the mud of Lebanon, in which they had been stuck since the beginning of the Lebanon War in 1982!

The original four, Rachel Ben Dor, Miri Sela, Ronit Nahmias and Zahara Antebi, organized demonstrations on the highways and at intersections every Friday, but there was a terrible price to pay in public opinion.  People yelled at them, accusing them of not understanding anything, condemning them for being women who shouldn’t enter the arena of security and the military, and for harming the morale of our soldiers serving in Lebanon.  People shouted, “Go back to the kitchen,” which was meant to be the ultimate put-down.  However, slowly but surely people from all over Israel joined them, people with deeper backgrounds and wider perspectives, and they began to publish educational materials for the Israeli public and for Israeli “leaders”. In these materials, they explained the rise of Hizbollah and the Shi’ites which was a result of Israel’s presence in southern Lebanon.  Previously, Lebanon had been ruled by Maronite Christians, as an inheritance from French colonization. Also, the PLO, who are Sunni Muslims had taken root in Lebanon after they were expelled from Jordan in September 1970, were a major player in the civil war which raged for 15 years, causing much chaos in Lebanon. In one of their meetings with the head of the IDF at the time, Rafael Eitan, they had to correct him after he told them that the Hizbollah fighters were Palestinians! In fact, they are Shi’ites. These women revealed how shocked they were to discover how ill-informed some of our leaders were (and are?!) about who we are really fighting against and why in Lebanon.

In 1998 and 1999, after more than 16-17 years of our soldiers getting slaughtered almost daily in the mud of Lebanon, their movement gained momentum and became more and more relevant to Israeli society.  The Four Mothers became a large grassroots movement and when Ehud Barak ran for the post of prime minister on behalf of the Labor Party, in May 1999, he was elected on a platform to withdraw our soldiers from Lebanon within a year, a promise he made good, to the overwhelming satisfaction of the citizens of Israel, who had experienced daily traumas from this war of attrition for so many years.

Four Mothers is a superb documentary film that lets the women speak for themselves.  It moved us to want to learn more about this movement -- and especially about these “ordinary” women who expressed themselves so poignantly and forthrightly throughout the film, and who became unbelievably committed to their cause. These women actually succeeded in taking on the military establishment while organizing and implementing the most successful anti-war movement in Israeli history!  This film also has some fabulous home footage shot by IDF soldiers themselves, and wonderful archival material. 

This is an inspirational story about women standing up for what they believe in our society and, as a result, causing a major change.   Indeed, other grassroots organizations today, such as the ones who are trying to topple Bibi, have a lot to learn from the inspirational and effective voluntary movement of these women and all their colleagues. The film (78 minutes) is available from Go2Films.

The Director's Angst - a new film by Dan Wolman

Readers of this blog already know that Dan Wolman is one of my favorite Israeli filmmakers.  His filmmaking can be characterized as humanistic and independent.  I loved so many of his feature films -- Hide and Seek, The Distance, Floch, Foreign Sister, My Michael, Valley of Fortitude, and more.

 

His most recent film, The Director's Angst, is quite different from his other films in both subject matter and genre.  According to author Amos Oz, It is a "heartbreaking film and sometimes so funny that it will bring you to tears.  There are unforgettable scenes and original and surprising cinematic ideas."  According to Wolman himself, the film is quite "offbeat". 

The film portrays a filmmaker who is attending the premiere screening of his first feature film called "The Surgery", and we have the opportunity to see bits and pieces of his film as he is hovering nearby, walking the halls, and flirting with the box office manager.  His film-within-a-film provides a surprisingly hard-hitting political satire of contemporary Israel, something that is not so obvious in most of Wolman's previous films (most of his other films are social commentary rather than political).  There is an interesting romantic sub-plot, some very biting dialogue, and a futuristic vision of a militaristic nation constantly at war. An underground group forms to take matters into their own hands and to change the course of things in their land.

It is worth catching this unusual and extraordinary film which is especially critical of the current Israeli political reality.  A strong satirical statement, The Director's Angst  (83 minutes, 2015), is available directly from the director/producer/scriptwriter, Dan Wolman (danwol@zahav.net.il).