One Shot - The fatal shot

One Shot is a documentary film by Israeli director Nurit Kedar . He deals with snipers of the Israeli army on duty in the occupied territories. He was awarded the 2004 Phoenix Prize for Non-Fiction Films. The director had to negotiate with the Israeli army for a year to get permission to film.

content

The documentary consists on the one hand of interviews with a number of Israeli snipers who were deployed in the occupied Palestinian territories and in Lebanon , on the other hand of original footage shot in action.

The snipers report on experiences in combat and their feelings. They sometimes give deep insights into their psyche. There is no comment. The questions put to the snipers cannot be heard either. This emphasizes the subjective point of view of the shooters and their emotional world.

The original recordings shown include how a unit of the Israeli army penetrates the houses of Palestinian civilians at night, probably to set up an observation post. There are also scenes of street fighting with Palestinian youth. Towards the end of the film there is a sequence in which an Israeli soldier is wounded.

Quotes

The quotes are intended to give a little insight into the statements made. Some of them come from different people.

• Later another man came from the same house. That was older than the other two. The situation where someone comes out of the house and sees two people he knows - probably relatives - dead, the coffee spilled on the floor, that's a terrible situation. He didn't run to get a gun and shoot back, he was in shock, that's what it looked like. He just stood there, stared in front of him and didn't move, motionless. I told myself that if he goes away now he'll stay alive. But he didn't go. I wanted him to go. I got angry because he didn't go away.
• We identified someone as a target. We saw this bearded guy. We shot him. We ran to get him. We brought him in and looked at his ID. And the guy was only 14 or 15 years old. But the guy had a beard - the telescopic sight doesn't say: I'm 15 years old! […] I really felt better, my conscience was relieved when I saw that the bullet had just hit his muscle. That bullet could have blown away his entire leg and maimed him for the rest of his life.
• It's legitimate, everything is fine. I only speak for myself. At some point, I gave up my right to go to Heaven, okay. Okay, then I'm not going to heaven, so what? What the hell? After killing someone for the first time, I thought, so what's going to happen now, what have you done? Has anything changed? And nothing had changed, nothing had happened. The wind kept blowing, the bees. It was quiet. [...] Only then do you realize what a miserable fate the guy whose angel of death I was.
• Is that a well-planned killing? Even a soldier who takes something by storm kills deliberately. But in the midst of noise and chaos. It is different with snipers. A sniper goes with more planning. [...] But is that cold-blooded murder? - What is cold blood murder?
• I don't feel like a murderer. I feel that I killed. That's a difference. Like when you're in a car accident and someone dies in the process. Then you feel that you have killed someone. I feel the same way. [...] I have no problems of conscience. I have a problem with myself as a person. Where I stand as a person who killed. What does that mean for me? How can I even say anything to anyone? Who am I that I could criticize someone?
• And then something great happened: at 5 a.m. I suddenly looked up and saw a little girl coming out of the house behind me. The prettiest girl I have ever seen in the occupied territories. [...] Suddenly to see this girl who only wants to go to school, who wants to live, to go into the garden and look at stones and plants and not a soldier staring at her. At that moment she experienced the greatest trauma of her life: I came out of the house and there was a soldier with a rifle.

Reviews

The film won the PHOENIX Prize at the Cologne Conference in June 2004 as the best film in the Top Ten Non-Fiction. In the laudation, Bodo Hauser and Dr. Klaus Radke: The film impressively shows the brutality of the fighting between Israelis and Palestinians. Nurit Kedar's camera acts like a lock. It seems like the Sagittarians have long waited for someone to share their experiences and nightmares with. Through the camera lens, the audience witnesses the painful process of self-knowledge: that behind the once heroic fighter hides a deeply insecure person who is tormented by the deaths of his victims. The jury described the film as a disturbing, provocative film.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Israel-Palestine: Brief introduction (PDF; 112 kB)
2. ↑ WDR: Presentation of the WDR ( Memento of the original from November 7, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.