Kippur

Director: Amos Gitai
Cast:  Liron Levo, Tomer Ruso, Uri Ran Klauzner, Yoram Hattab, Guy Amir Screenplay Amos Gitai, Marie-José Sanselme
Israel, France; 120’, 2000, color
Hebrew with Turkish subtitles

1973. The country is quiet, it is Yom Kippur. When the war breaks out, Weinraub and his friend Ruso race out to the Golan Heights to join their unit. Chaos reigns everywhere. They cannot find their unit; so decide to join an Air Force emergency first-aid unit. A few days later, a missile shoots down their helicopter over the Golan Heights.

"Throughout the film, the viewer remains locked in this absurd question: are we in the war or is that happening somewhere else, off-screen, or was it happening just before the camera got there? We never know for certain and then we realise that this uncertainty is in fact the most profound truth of war, as cinema has hardly ever shown it, with a force and an intensity that takes your breath away. (...) The principle for filming warfare in Kippur is simple, limpid. Favouring real time spaces, (...) making the camera an extra person walking with the soldiers, running behind the others to get on the helicopter before it takes off. The viewer is inside the war while remaining outside the group, accompanying them. Never does the film encourage in the viewer that fantasy of being one of them."

Charles Tesson, Cahiers du cinéma, n°549, September 2000