The Gatekeepers

Six men sit down in front of the camera. All of them headed Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service, and none had spoken like this before. The questions are simple: what did you do, why did you do it, and what do you think now. The narrative starts in 1967 and comes to the present. Methods of interrogation, assassinations, the network of informers, an incident with a bus and the killing of a prime minister are all discussed. All six defend the work they did. All six at some point say the same thing: this road has no end. Dror Moreh directs. Ami Ayalon, Avraham Shalom, Yaakov Peri, Carmi Gillon, Avi Dichter and Yuval Diskin speak in it. It is an Israeli, French, German and Belgian co-production. The documentary was nominated for the Oscar for best documentary. The narrative uses archive footage together with three dimensional reconstruction; some operations are animated from photographs. The matter it treats is means becoming independent of ends; there is a system running and nobody stops it. The documentary builds an argument and arrives at it through what the men say. The film caused controversy in Israel; because of who was speaking, what they said could not easily be dismissed. The narrative gives no voice to the Palestinian side and that absence was criticised. None of the men speaks in the language of regret and the narrative does not tidy that. Its limit is scope; the narrative is one sided, the structure conventional, and the subject asks for knowledge. Who it is for: viewers who like political documentary and narratives of testimony. Who it is not for: it is heavy, one sided, and the ending hopeless.