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Micha Shagrir was one of the first Israelis to have visited Egypt in the years following the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Embarking on a secret, private, and most unique mission in the late seventies, Shagrir crossed the border ahead of the signing of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty. The purpose of this mission was to personally return a fallen Egyptian soldier’s journal who had been killed in the Yom Kippur War. The 1981 film, Diary of an Egyptian Soldier, chronicles Shagrir’s journey across Egypt in search of the late soldier’s parents. This extraordinary visit presented Shagrir with a rare of opportunity to depict the war and its harsh consequences from the other side of the border via then-ultrarare footage of Alexandria, Cairo, the Suez Canal, and various regions of rural Egypt.
Quoted excerpts from the journal provide a window into the Egyptian soldier’s day-to-day musings and lyrical waxing, whose one and only wish was to return home safely. The rare and moving encounter with his parents offers a one-off glimpse of a spellbinding, honest dialogue between Israelis and Egyptians in the aftermath of this bloodied war.
Under Shagrir’s production and directing vision, the time-plot unity is done away with. This, he achieves through voice-over narration from either side of the border which combines descriptions of Shagrir’s Egyptian excursion with excerpts from the diary. In doing so, the director distances himself from the situation whilst, all the while, maintaining his uncompromising commitment to the truth and the individual’s own human voice, and without ever becoming exploitative, or indulging in sentimentality. Like many of Shagrir’s other films, here too – the individual’s story; that is, the Egyptian’s soldier’s is woven into the greater, historical narrative arc of the Middle East – i.e. Israel’s physical borders that separate it from its neighbours, vs. the boundaries that define it as a moral, just society.
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All rights are reserved to the Jerusalem Cinematheque – Israeli Film Archive (RA) and the rights holders of the works. Any use of works on the website for non-individual and non-personal purposes is strictly prohibited without prior, written permission.
For more information about the rights holders, please visit the relevant collection page, or contact the Jerusalem Cinematheque – Israeli Film Archive (RA) offices.
We have the utmost respect for all rights holders’ copyright and put great efforts to track down any and all intellectual property owners for the purpose of seeking and obtaining permission to use their materials featured on the website.
Any and all materials are used in accordance with clause 27a of the 2007 Copyright Act. If you believe that your rights as intellectual property and copyright owners of any material featured on this website have been compromised, then you may contact the Israeli Film Archive via email with a cease-and-desist notice, requesting that the material in alleged copyright infringement no longer be used. When contacting the archive, please state the merit to your copyright ownership claim, as well as your full name, email address, and telephone number, with a link to the relevant webpage.