Lebanon (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Lebanon |
| Original title | לבנון (Lebanon / Levanon) |
| Country of production | Israel , Germany , France , Lebanon |
| original language | Hebrew |
| Publishing year | 2009 |
| length | 93 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Samuel Maoz |
| script | Samuel Maoz |
| production |
Moshe Edery , Leon Edery , Anat Bikel , Uri Sabag , Benjamina Mirnik , Ilann Girard , David Silber |
| music |
Nicolas Becker , Benoît Delbecq |
| camera | Giora Bejach |
| cut | Arik Leibovitch |
| occupation | |
| |
Lebanon (Original title: Hebrew לבנון Lebanon ) is a feature film from the year 2009 . The Israeli - German - French - Lebanese coproduction was directed by Samuel Maoz . In his award-winning feature film debut, the director processed his own participation in the Lebanon war in 1982.
action
The first day of the Lebanon campaign in 1982: the young Israeli soldier Shmulik joins a tank crew as a rifleman. Besides him, this consists of the strict Assil, who is in charge of the tank command, the cheeky Hertzel, who reloads the guns, and the good-natured and helpful driver Yigal. The young tank crew (codenamed "Rhinoceros" in internal radio communications) belong to a soldier-foot unit around the tough, no-contradicting commander Jamil (code name: "Cinderella"). In broad daylight, they venture across a sunflower field and a banana plantation behind enemy lines that have already been attacked by the Israeli air force.
Already in the plantation, the troops are attacked by armed Arab insurgents in a car. Shmulik, who has never shot at people, is confused by the dangerous situation. He doesn't fire a single shot. The tank crew observed attempts to resuscitate a fatally wounded Israeli soldier, known in army circles as an "angel", who was finally dumped in the tank. Commander Jamil orders no more warning shots to be fired after the incident. As a result, a subsequent delivery truck belonging to a poultry farmer was mistakenly attacked by Shmulik. The seriously injured Arab driver is shot dead by Jamil.
The troop reached a city destroyed by the Israeli air force, where the soldiers were confronted with numerous corpses, but also a few surviving civilians. At the same time, the body of the Israeli soldier is picked up by a helicopter. Jamil informs the tank crew that they will enter civilian territory for a short time. The phosphorus grenades, which violate international law, will continue to be used under the code name “flaming smoke”. Yigal's naive request to Jamil to send his parents a message is not granted and the rest of the tank crew briefly turns against the driver. When terrorists take an apparently Arab-Christian family hostage in a destroyed apartment building, Shmulik hesitates again and belatedly shoots a grenade. Only the desperate mother survives, who half-naked mourns her killed daughter and is left behind by the Israelis.
Jamil warns Shmulik and Assil and orders the crew to fire a phosphor grenade whenever they observe any movement. Shmulik, Assil and Hertzel then get into an argument. The four survive a subsequent rocket attack on the tank in the destroyed city center unharmed, but the tank appears to be unfit to drive to Yigal. At the same time, the crew heard over the radio that their squad had strayed from the route and were moving in an area controlled by a Syrian command, far from the Israeli rearguard. A captured Syrian soldier ("cricket") is handed over to them by Jamil for surveillance and is chained inside the tank. The troop commander proves to the crew that the tank is still halfway roadworthy, which Assil angered against the others. Jamil refuses, contrary to the orders of the army command, to cooperate with Phalangists who bring the troops to the Israeli base “St. Tropez ”. A phalangist threatens the Syrian prisoner in the tank in Arabic, who then has to be immobilized with morphine by the ignorant crew. Via the emergency radio channel "Pluto", Hertzel finds out how desperate the situation of Jamil's squad is, who notify the army command via radio to inform his and Yigal's parents about their situation.
During the night, the tank crew led by the Phalangists is on the way to “St. Tropez "cut off from Jamil and his troops. Assil refuses to follow the route suggested by a phalangist. Suddenly the crew heard loud Arabic music in the silence. Jamil radio orders them to go north and destroy everything on the way. Yigal loses his nerve as the tank comes under fire and hit. Yigal, whose parents were informed by the army command as promised, is fatally injured. The next morning Shmulik fulfills the urgent need of the Syrian prisoner and lets him urinate in a container. When Shmulik takes a look out of the tank, he notices that, as at the beginning of their mission, they are outside the city in a field full of sunflowers.
History of origin
In 2007 Maoz began making the film, his first feature film project. In this he devoted himself to the 1982 Lebanon War, in which he himself was wounded as a young 20-year-old soldier. In the script, Maoz processed personal experiences after his directors Joseph Cedar ( Beaufort , 2007) and Ari Folman ( Waltz with Bashir , 2008) had already addressed the Lebanon war and their personal past. "It took me 20 years before I had the strength to write the script," Maoz said in December 2006 before filming began. “When I was in Lebanon, it changed my life. I killed people while I was there. The film looks at very complicated problems. ”Maoz's directorial work was financially supported by the Filmstiftung Nordrhein-Westfalen , among others , which emphasized that the film would remain“ entirely with the tank crew ”. "The war and the oppressive threat can only be seen through the viewfinder of the rifle scope."
background
German co-producers were Benjamina Mirnik and Sonja Ewers from the Cologne company Ariel Films GmbH. The cinema release in German-speaking countries was on October 14, 2010, and the film distributor is Senator Entertainment AG.
Reviews
The majority of the German-speaking trade press expressed their enthusiasm for the film. Peter Zander ( Die Welt ) praised Lebanon as one of the most convincing competition entries, which "grows far beyond the concrete historical case into a general parable of the war", while the Austrian standard emphasized the conceptual idea of the claustrophobic chamber play as an extremely effective means To address the imponderables of war.
Felicitas Kleiner from the film service was more critical . Lebanon is an “impressive (anti) war film”, but the film would leave a “slightly stale aftertaste”: “All too decidedly something like an apotheosis for the traumatized soldiers is struggled here, all political contexts and questions of guilt are hidden around it. As humanly understandable as it is with regard to the filmmaker's vita, one cannot avoid noticing the one-sidedness of this representation of the politically sensitive topic. "
Awards
Lebanon was awarded the Golden Lion and the Nazareno Taddei Prize at the 66th Venice Film Festival and an honorable mention from the World Catholic Association for Communication (SIGNIS). In the same year the film was nominated in ten categories for the Ophir Award , Israel's national film award, among others in the categories of film , directing and leading actor (Yoav Donat). There were victories for supporting actor Zohar Shtrauss, the camera, the sound and the production design. Maoz received the Human Values Award at the Thessaloniki Film Festival . Cinematographer Giora Bejach was honored with the Golden Frog of the Polish film festival Camerimage . The 2010 European Film Prize was awarded five nominations in the categories of film, directing, screenplay, camera and editing as well as one nomination in the category of best first work . Lebanon won the prizes for camera and first work.
Web links
- Lebanon Official German website for the film
- Lebanon in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Lebanon at filmportal.de (with trailer and photo gallery)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release certificate for Lebanon . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , September 2010 (PDF; test number: 119 941-a K).
- ^ Venezia: Levanon, la guerra vista da un tank . ANSA , Aug 26, 2009 5:26 PM CET, Rome
- ↑ Article from Zeit-Online ( Memento from September 12, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Ali Jaafar: Israelis tackle Lebanese occupation . In: Variety , 12. – 18. June 2006, p. 12
- ^ NRW films in Venice . In: General-Anzeiger (Bonn) , July 31, 2009, p. 12
- ^ Peter Zander: Putsch and War in Venice: German competition film is an award-winning film . Welt-Online , September 9, 2009 (accessed September 12, 2009)
- ↑ Dominik Kamalzadeh: Lies have a long-term effect at derstandard.at, September 8, 2009 (accessed on September 12, 2009)
- ↑ Felicitas Kleiners Venice Diary (7) ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at film-dienst.kim-info.de (accessed on September 13, 2009)
- ↑ Article from Welt-Online
