Yoav Raz

Movies

What if? Ehud Barak on War and Peace
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Can a leader succeed in influencing the world? Or is he, as any other human being, only a nutshell tossed to the waves of history with no ability to affect it? Tolstoy pondered this question in War and Peace. Ehud Barak, controversial former prime minister and a decorated commander on the battlefield, contemplates it in this film. Twenty years after he was forced to resign from the premiership due to the failure of the 2000 Camp David summit, 78-year-old Barak observes his own history and the history of the State of Israel with disillusioned clarity, while trying to figure it all out - "What if?"
Zirei Kayitz
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Seven years after completing an Israeli Defense Course for female combat soldiers, director Hen Lasker returns to take a deeper look at the place where she first fell in love with a woman. Over the course of 66 days and nights, Lasker shoots a fly-on-the-wall documentary that allows unprecedented intimacy into the lives of the trainees and commanders of the Israeli army. The dichotomy of the innocence of these baby-faced trainees with the heavy burden of military service is a central theme of the film, illustrated in a scene where they discuss losing their virginity while waiting their turn to fire a machine gun. But it is the director’s relationship with Smadar, a breathtaking commander struggling to mask her gentle soul with a strict military persona, which makes the film truly enchanting. The intersection of love, duty, and personal growth thrive through to the film’s surprisingly moving finish.