119 Bullets Plus Three

62 Minutes, 1995
Genre:
Documentary
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Directed by: Yeud Levanon
Production:Yeud Levanon, Amit Goren
Production Company:Home Pictures Ltd, Tel Aviv
Photographer: Ofer Frant, Alon Bernstein
Original Music: Doron Shenkar
Language: Hebrew
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Subtitles: English, Hebrew

The title of Levanon’s documentary is a reference to the 119 bullets fired by mass murderer, Baruch Goldstein, as he massacred 29 Muslim worshippers at the Cave of the Patriarchs in 1994, and the three bullets fired by killer, Yigal Amir, who assassinated Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, the following year.
Levanon’s film which began shooting about a year and a half before Rabin’s murder, opens on the eve of the assassination and from there, proceeds to jump back and forth in time. The film follows the days in the immediate aftermath of the murder, capturing a grief-stricken country in a complete state of shock. Alongside all of that is footage shot a year and a half earlier, featuring interviews with the fundamentalist heads of the Israeli far right and leaders of the Jewish Resistance, including Yehuda Etzion and Hagai Segal; all of whom Levanon sat down with in an attempt to assess the risk of civil war breaking out in Israel. The film also features footage from Levanon’s 1976 political short, The Honey Conspiracy, in which he explored the potential existence of a far-right resistance organisation, plotting in the shadows.
The film was featured at countless festivals around the world, including the Berlin and Hong Kong international film festivals; it was shown at New York City’s MOMA (the Museum of Modern Art History), and even won a special prize at the FIPA Festival in Biarritz, France. Due to the extremely sensitive nature of the subject matter, the film failed to secure an Israeli distributor or broadcaster that would air it.

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