The Alpha Diaries

65 Minutes, 2007
Genre:
Documentary

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Directed by: Yaniv Berman
Production:Avi Klinbrger
Photographer: Yaniv Berman
Language: Hebrew
| Subtitles not available

Director Yaniv Berman spent five years chronicling the day-to-day lives of troops serving with the IDF’s 16th Infantry Brigade’s Battalion 8 – Company A, which also happens to be his own assigned company as a reservist soldier. The film paints an intimate portrait of company life: from the daily laughter and levity of the soldiers who show up annually for their reservist duty, giving up a whole month of their civilian lives for the cause, through the gruelling training exercises, and all the way to their field assignments and arrests they are sent off to carry out.
Once a year, the film’s protagonists hit ‘Pause’ on their ‘normal lives’ – i.e. their partners, families, jobs, etc. – kit up and go off on what one man has dubbed, “feral missions” – referring to security operations in Palestinian-ruled / occupied territories including ambushes, pursuits, and arrests, during which they are thrust into the very beating, bleeding heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The film highlights the absurdity of this interminable war and the pain felt by either side: the Palestinian youths dragged out of their homes in the dead of night, bound and humiliated, en route to the miliary van, and the Israeli reservist soldiers tasked with following such difficult orders and who, bit by bit, experience a rude awakening that leaves them wondering just how unreproachable the morals of their actions really are.
In one key scene, a reservist soldier turns to Berman, the director behind the camera, and proceeds to ‘hit him’ with the hard truth that his part in all this doesn’t end with documenting the action. As Lieutenant General, he is every bit as much part of the company as the rest of them, and as such carries equal responsibility for their field actions. This adds yet another layer to the list of moral quandaries the film grapples with – chiefly, the matter of the creator’s role and responsibility.

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