Kippur

In 1973, during the Yom Kippur War, young medics toil under Syrian fire in a rescue mission with the Israeli army on the Golan. During breaks in the fighting, the long-haired soldiers grumble about the consumerist mania, tell each other about childhood memories and dreams of death that were thwarted by the Holocaust. Amos Gitai, himself a veteran of 1973, approaches one of the last wars that took place in battles with gestures of emptiness: Tel Aviv has died out, the images of the hand-held camera driving cars, flying in helicopters and bumpy mountains of comrades seem endless. Little happens, but it happens violently. No enemy and hardly any cuts in the picture, a few tanks in a lot of wasteland, engine noise, vehicle tracks in the mud as afterimages of a body painting sex intro. Jim Hoberman calls Kippur a structural film in the spirit of Sam Fuller, which leaves open whether war is a deviation from the norm or routine. (Drehli Robnik)

Photo: Austrian Film Museum