Concrete

52 Minutes, 2011
Genre:
Documentary

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Directed by: Nurit Kedar
Production:Yehuda Bitton
Production Company:Yehuda Bitton Productions
Photographer: Giora Bikh
Original Music: Ofir Leibovitz
Language: Hebrew
| Subtitles not available

Filmmaker Nurit Kedar’s documentary brings viewers the stories behind the 2008-09 Gaza War (aka ‘Operation Cast Lead’) through a series of interviews with 10 Israeli infantry soldiers who took part in active combat. Kedar struggled to come up with a sufficient number of interviewees who would agree to speak without the condition of anonymity, seeing as how the Goldstone Report (aka the United Nations’ Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict) which was published whilst the film was in production, recommended that its findings be escalated to the Hague’s International Criminal Court to determine whether both sides (i.e., the IDF and Hamas) had committed war crimes.
Chilling testimonies recalling scenes of bloodied combat and fighting, were crosscut with footage of Israeli highschoolers whose military conscription was imminent, standing in silence in front of the camera. And thus, we have a cycle: there are the soldiers who, not two heartbeats ago, were themselves still children before being sent off to Gaza and coming home traumatised and scarred – and those who will soon be drafted, and will most likely also take part in the next military conflict.
The film which, initially struggled to find an Israeli broadcast network that would agree to air it for fear of undermining public morale, eventually aired on public broadcaster Channel 1, and even earned a Special Mention at the Jerusalem Film Festival.

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