Tantura

Alon Schwarz's 2022 documentary investigates what happened in a Palestinian village in 1948. At the end of the nineties Teddy Katz, then a graduate student, conducted hundreds of hours of interviews with soldiers who served at the time and alleged a massacre. Katz's thesis was accepted, then a lawsuit followed and he withdrew the work. The documentary returns to those recordings; Schwarz speaks with those of the same people still living, and some confirm on camera what happened. The film's real subject is less the event than why it cannot be discussed. How that period is narrated in Israeli society and what is left out sits at the centre. It produced wide argument when shown in the country. Who it's for: those who can watch documentaries on history and memory. Who it's not for: viewers expecting a many-sided account of the conflict; the film argues a particular claim and its sources are contested.