A reconstruction of the events of November 4, 1995, when Israeli President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Yitzhak Rabin was murdered after a massive peace demonstration in central Tel Aviv. The authenticity of all situations prior to the brutal act of extremist hatred supports the impression that the reenacted scenes are actual documentary footage.
A combination of documentary and drama goes into this reconstruction of the November 4, 1995 murder of Nobel Peace Prize winner and President of Israel Yitzhak Rabin. Except for a few actual figures, including the slain politician’s friend Shimon Peres – who describes the events as he witnessed them – actors appear in the film. Yet everything is rendered with such authenticity that the majority of viewers at this year’s festival in Venice assumed it was secretly acquired footage of actual situations. It was, of course, not possible to record gatherings of Talmudic extremists, who cursed Rabin for his openness to the idea of a peaceful settlement to the Palestinian conflict. Nor is it likely that the commission investigating Rabin’s brutal murder after the massive peace demonstration in central Tel Aviv would leak any record of their deliberations. The impression of absolute veracity is therefore essentially due to the flawless scripting and directing work undertaken by the filmmaker, and to the efforts of his actors and the entire crew.
Eva Zaoralová (2012)
153 min / Color, DCP
Director Amos Gitai
/ Screenplay Amos Gitai, José Sanselme
/ Dir. of Photography Eric Gautier
/ Music Amit Poznansky
/ Editor Yuval Orr, Tahel Sofer, Isabelle Ingold
/ Art Director Miguel Merkin
/ Producer Amos Gitai, Jean Baptiste DuPont, Sylvie Pialat, Laurent Truchot, David Kessler, Pierre Rasamoela
/ Production Agav Films, Les Films du Worso, LGM Cinéma, Hamon Hafakot
/ Coproduction France 2 Cinéma, Orange Studio
/ Cast Ischac Hiskiya, Pini Mitelman, Michael Warshaviak, Einat Weizman, Rotem Keinan
/ Sales Indie Sales
Amos Gitai (b. 1950, Haifa) studied architecture in Haifa (1971-75) and at the University of California, Berkeley (1976). While at school he began shooting experimental Super 8 films. He served in the Yom Kippur War, during which he was wounded on a helicopter rescue mission (1973). Traumatic war experiences and sociopolitical events led him to start directing documentaries and acted films. He contributed writing and production talents (on occasion also DOP) to most of his pictures – work that focuses on the still-current issues of exile, integration, racism, and the coexistence of Arab and Jewish inhabitants in various territories. Since the mid-1980s he has worked in both Israel and France. Karlovy Vary audiences first encountered his work in 2002 with Kedma, and a year later the festival presented his “golem trilogy” (Birth of a Golem, 1990; Golem: The Spirit of Exile, 1991; Golem: The Petrified Garden, 1993).
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