2015 | Germany, Israel | NR | 84 min.
Shortly after Israel’s decisive 1967 victory in the
Six-Day War—while the country celebrated the
tripling of its size with seizure of the Sinai Peninsula,
West Bank, and Gollan Heights—returning
soldiers sat down to record their battlefield
experiences. When authors Amos Oz and Avraham
Shapira tried to publish those interviews,
the Israeli army censored all but 30 percent
of them. Now, for the first time, the soldiers’
tortured words are finally being heard, and they
tell a very different tale than what had previously
been reported. Oz and many of the men he
spoke with, now grown old, revisit the anguish,
guilt, and doubt they felt over their actions in
the war that excised Palestine with such harrowing
force. It seems that the march of time does
not heal all wounds. “We were told not to show
mercy,” says one. Asks another, “Are we doomed
to live in the pauses between wars?” This momentous
film casts new light on old ideas about
the famous conflict, and stands as a clear-eyed
reminder of all the other histories from around
the world that still remain untold.