Lebanon

1 June 1982, the Lebanese border. Four soldiers are inside an Israeli tank: driver, loader, commander and gunner. The task is to sweep a town the air force has bombed, together with paratroopers. The film happens almost entirely inside the tank, and the outside is seen only through the gunner's sight. The camera never goes out. What the structure produces is responsibility as much as claustrophobia: the audience sees exactly what the gunner sees and shares the decision to fire on the same information. The slow rotation of the sight and the way it freezes where it stops set the rhythm of the whole film. Samuel Maoz wrote and directed, his first feature. The story rests on his own experience: at twenty he was a gunner in one of the first Israeli tanks to enter the 1982 Lebanon war. It won the Golden Lion at the 66th Venice Film Festival, making Maoz the first Israeli director to take that prize. Who it is for: anyone who likes front-line films and tension built in a single space. Who it is not for: anyone uncomfortable in confined spaces. The film means to be suffocating, gives almost no political context, and the Lebanese civilians are seen only through the sight.