Price : NIS15
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Operation Thunderbolt

128 Minutes, 1977
Genre:
Feature

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Menahem Golan’s hit film came out in cinemas just over a year after the hijacking of an Air France flight by Palestinian and German terrorists, which was then forced to land at Uganda’s Entebbe Airport. The bold rescue mission at the heart of the film saw the release of the aircraft’s 105 Jewish passengers and cabin crew – all of whom were held hostage. Mixing fact and fiction, the film recreates the unparalleled heroism of the IDF’s soldiers and commanders, the hostages’ severe duress, and the performance of those various heads of state involved at the time of this international emergency.
Several characters were based on real-life individuals, chiefly the late Yonatan (Yoni) Netanyahu (brother of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu), played by Yehoram Gaon, who had commanded the special ops unit in charge of freeing the hostages and was killed during the operation. Other characters meanwhile, including the hostages, were primarily fictional and inspired by the 1970s’ popular disaster movie genre, e.g. George Seaton’s Airport (1970).
The film was shot by Adam Greenberg and scored by Dov (‘Dubi’) Seltzer. Woven into the scripted scenes is archival footage featuring then-Prime Minister, the late Yitzhak Rabin, Defence Secretary Shimon Peres, Transport Secretary Gad Yaacobi, and Foreign Secretary Yigal Alon – all of whom had given Golan permission to use footage from confidential meetings held in parliament behind closed doors during the special ops mission.
Operation Thunderbolt was a box office juggernaut, with over 800,000 viewers who had rushed to cinemas by the droves to watch it. The film also scored an Oscar Nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, only to lose out to France’s Madame Rosa, by Israeli director Moshé Mizrahi.

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