Israeli Film 'Foxtrot' Nominated for Best Foreign Film Oscar 2018

The inclusion of the Israeli film 'Foxtrot' in the final list of nine nominees for the 2018 Oscar for Best Foreign Film is a point of pride for Israeli cinema, which has only won this award once in the distant past. However, Israeli Culture Minister Miri Regev and right-wing factions in Israel are not pleased with this cinematic achievement. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in the United States released the list of nine top foreign films from among 92 submissions for the 2018 Oscar on December 14, with the final five nominees to be announced on January 23, and the Oscar ceremony set for March 4. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that 'Foxtrot' was introduced as Israel's representative for the Oscars by the Israeli Film Academy, while Minister Miri Regev had previously described the film as a distortion of the Israeli army and has criticized its creators multiple times in recent weeks. According to Haaretz, Regev expressed her anger over 'the making of films in Israel that brainwash the young generation against the most moral army in the world.' She has also admitted that she has not seen the film, stating on Facebook that she would 'never be willing to watch these annoying films.' Regev, who was previously a spokesperson for the Israeli army, has expressed her opinion since the film's release in Israeli cinemas last summer, calling it 'another lie against the army, under the guise of art.' She has condemned the allocation of funding by cultural and artistic institutions for such artistic works and has called for the cessation of these funds. Regev is not the only Israeli politician who has criticized the film without having seen it; other right-wing politicians have also condemned the filmmakers and even the actors. Their main argument is that the violence depicted by soldiers against Palestinians in the film is a distortion of the army. The anger from right-wing forces does not imply that leftist forces and organizations like 'Breaking the Silence' have welcomed the film; leftist activists also have their criticisms of 'Foxtrot.' Gideon Levy, a government critic and journalist at Haaretz, wrote that if the army's spokesperson wanted to create a more effective film to whitewash the army, they could not have done better than this. Despite the anger from Israeli right-wingers towards 'Foxtrot,' the Israeli Film and Television Academy awarded the film the 'Ophir' award, the main annual award of Israeli cinema, two months ago; Miri Regev was not invited to this ceremony, and the president of the Israeli Film and Television Academy stated in a statement that the lack of an invitation for the minister was contrary to the principle of freedom of thought and expression. 'Foxtrot,' directed by Samuel Maoz, has received funding from the Israeli Film Fund and has also been supported by European investors, making it a joint Israeli-German-French production. After several weeks of screening in Israel, the film has also been released in American cinemas. The jury of the Venice Film Festival recently named 'Foxtrot' as their top choice and awarded it their Grand Prize; its screening at the Toronto International Film Festival was also met with acclaim. 'Foxtrot' tells the story of an Israeli family named Feldman; a middle-aged couple, Michael and Dafna, and their daughter in Tel Aviv; and their son Yonatan, who is serving mandatory military service near Palestinian territories in the south. An army officer, accompanied by several soldiers, goes to the Feldman family's home; Dafna, the mother, faints in fear upon seeing the officer and soldiers, knowing that they bring bad news; according to the officer, Yonatan has been killed 'in an operation.' Michael, the father, retreats into himself but tends to his fainted wife; Avigdor, the brother, arrives to arrange the funeral; Michael goes to his mother to deliver the grim news to Yonatan's grandmother, who is a Holocaust survivor and ill; Michael calls his son by the names of his brothers who were killed in the Holocaust; the elderly mother speaks only German... The events of the first five hours after receiving the news of Yonatan's death at Michael and Dafna's home suddenly connect to the heavy silence at a checkpoint in the desert in southern Israel near Gaza, where Yonatan was and was killed; before his death, he and three other soldiers aged 18 to 21 fill their boring hours at this checkpoint with activities like drawing cartoons, etc.; the four young soldiers sleep in an abandoned pickup truck... Six months later, at the home of the grieving parents; Michael looks longingly at his son's drawn cartoons; he notices that the last page of the cartoon notebook is missing... Dafna is making a birthday cake and laments, blaming Michael for what has happened to the family; in this exchange of accusations, there is also a kind of release of hidden grievances; Alma, the daughter of the family, who suddenly returns, is pleased to see her parents talking; she leaves them and goes out of the house; the couple remains in the house, grieving with an eternal longing... In the last scene, the pickup truck that was Yonatan's and his comrades' dormitory at the checkpoint veers off the road and is destroyed... The silent but hot and mysterious desert of southern Israel; the ever-skeptical looks of soldiers at vehicles and Palestinians crossing near the border; mutual anger and hatred; a silence that could be broken at any moment; the Israeli side has a gun in hand and releases its doubts and fears by shooting bullets in that direction, while the other side, seemingly empty-handed, has its grievances piled up and turned into a powder keg, believing it must strap on a suicide belt to approach the checkpoint or anyone else from the opposing side; a vicious cycle... Scenes from a conflict that has continued for a century and has been an inseparable part of daily news in the lives of several generations... 'Foxtrot' is Samuel Maoz's second feature film; however, its story is not far from his first film. 'Lebanon,' Maoz's first feature, filmed in 2009, was entirely from inside an Israeli tank and a few steps outside it to depict the presence of Israeli soldiers during the occupation of southern Lebanon; 'Lebanon' was also acclaimed worldwide, but right-wing compatriots of Maoz considered this work to be aligned with the left, which they believe has been ousted from the political and governmental scene and has no prospects for a return to this position, and did not see the foreign awards it received as a credit for Israeli cinema. 'Foxtrot' is among the nine foreign films nominated for the Oscar alongside 'The Square' from Sweden, 'The Insult' from Lebanon, 'On Body and Soul' from Hungary, 'A Fantastic Woman' from Chile, 'Loveless' from Russia, 'The Wound' from South Africa, 'In the Fade' from Germany, and 'Félicité' from Senegal; the film 'Breath' by Narges Abyar, the first Iranian woman to have her film nominated for the Oscars, was removed from this list of nine. Cinema critics speculate that the Swedish film 'The Square' by Ruben Östlund, which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and the European Film Academy Award and is a Golden Globe nominee, is likely to win this year's Oscar in the foreign film category. Li Or Ashkenazi, the lead actor in 'Foxtrot,' said on December 15 to Israeli radio Kan that he also believes that Israel may be far from winning an Oscar this year and that the Best Foreign Film Oscar may go to the Swedish film. At the same time, Li Or Ashkenazi stated that if 'Foxtrot' wins the Oscar, it could be seen as a reaction to the increasing interventions of government officials and politicians in the cultural and artistic scene in this country.