Here is a calendar of upcoming events, up and down the country. Some are organized by us, others by like-minded organizations and groups.
An unsettling vision of military service pervading everyday Israeli life, Samuel Maoz’s (Lebanon) visceral and startlingly unpredictable film centres on a Tel Aviv couple coping with the death of their son, a soldier stationed in the middle of nowhere.
“Maazo’s marvelous, harrowing drama about death and life in Israel marches boldly through the no-man’s-land between realism and surrealism. It’s prize collection of paradoxes, combining an intimate, eviscerating depiction of parental grief ove ra serviceman’s death with an empathic, absurdist rendering of young Israeli Defence Force soldiers manning a remote and otherworldly roadblock…
Foxtrot carries the excitement and punch of a fearless writer-director tackling contemporary material with a bracing cocktail of potent traditional drama, wild black comedy, and serrated style. [It all] comes together as a complex plea for honesty, openness, frankness, and forgiveness. The movie is also, incidentally, a spectacularly effective antiwar film, focusing on the randomness and cruelty of life lived on military roads… Its final image resters like a blow to the chest. It’s a shot that should be seen around the world.” — Michael Sragow, Film Comment
“[Foxtrot] contains some of themost striking, memorable imagery of the year… It’s a film designed tomove you with its depiction of senseless tragedy but also to spark that part of your thinking process that only moviemaking can tap… This multitalented filmmaker has taken that darkness and turned it into something unforgettable for everyone who sees it.” — Brian Tallerico, RobertEbert.com
Awards: Grand Jury Price, Venice Film Festival 2017
Hebrew, Arabic and German, with English subtitles; 113 minutes.
An unsettling vision of military service pervading everyday Israeli life, Samuel Maoz’s (Lebanon) visceral and startlingly unpredictable film centres on a Tel Aviv couple coping with the death of their son, a soldier stationed in the middle of nowhere.
“Maazo’s marvelous, harrowing drama about death and life in Israel marches boldly through the no-man’s-land between realism and surrealism. It’s prize collection of paradoxes, combining an intimate, eviscerating depiction of parental grief ove ra serviceman’s death with an empathic, absurdist rendering of young Israeli Defence Force soldiers manning a remote and otherworldly roadblock…
Foxtrot carries the excitement and punch of a fearless writer-director tackling contemporary material with a bracing cocktail of potent traditional drama, wild black comedy, and serrated style. [It all] comes together as a complex plea for honesty, openness, frankness, and forgiveness. The movie is also, incidentally, a spectacularly effective antiwar film, focusing on the randomness and cruelty of life lived on military roads… Its final image resters like a blow to the chest. It’s a shot that should be seen around the world.” — Michael Sragow, Film Comment
“[Foxtrot] contains some of themost striking, memorable imagery of the year… It’s a film designed tomove you with its depiction of senseless tragedy but also to spark that part of your thinking process that only moviemaking can tap… This multitalented filmmaker has taken that darkness and turned it into something unforgettable for everyone who sees it.” — Brian Tallerico, RobertEbert.com
Awards: Grand Jury Price, Venice Film Festival 2017
Hebrew, Arabic and German, with English subtitles; 113 minutes.
See you there!
The Bibas Family, in happier times
The DCM at the Embassy, Yael Holan has asked if we would like to “adopt” a family of hostages to raise awareness of their plight.
They are the Bibas family.
Kfir, Ariel and Shiri Bibas, and presumably their father Yarden were all kidnapped from Nir Oz, an Israeli kibbutz that was devastated when it came under attack by Hamas militants on October 7. The attackers murdered more than a quarter of the community and seized scores of others, as they fired at people’s homes, looted and destroyed what they could.
The armed wing of Hamas has claimed, without providing evidence, that Kfir, his 4-year-old brother, Ariel, and their mother, Shiri, were killed in an Israeli airstrike. The armed wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, said they had been killed in earlier Israeli bombing.
Kfir was nine months old when he was abducted, he will turn one on January 18.
We are proposing to hold a special meeting for them on Thursday, January 18.
Hao Room, Halswell Centre, 341 Halswell Rd, Christchurch.
