Foxtrot

A couple in Tel Aviv are told their son has died on military service. The father collapses, and then it emerges there has been a mistake. The second part takes place at the remote checkpoint where the son serves: four soldiers, an empty road and a camel passing now and then. Samuel Maoz wrote and directed. Lior Ashkenazi plays the father, Sarah Adler the mother. The film has three parts and each uses a different formal language: the first enclosed and vertically framed, the second wide and empty in its staging, the third returning to the first. The dance step of the title is the argument itself: whatever the steps, you return to where you started. It won the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 2017. It caused political argument in Israel; the culture minister of the day attacked it for defaming the army and opposed its representation abroad. Maoz said he had served himself and that this was why he made it. Who it is for: viewers who like formally bold post-war drama. Who it is not for: anyone expecting directness; the film proceeds by metaphor.