Screened as part of NZIFF 2018

Foxtrot 2017

Directed by Samuel Maoz

An Israeli family wrestles with loss as soldiers at a remote checkpoint battle ennui in this daring, visionary tragidrama from the director of Lebanon. Winner of the Venice Film Festival’s Grand Jury Prize.

Israel In Arabic, German and Hebrew with English subtitles
113 minutes CinemaScope/DCP

Rent

Director/Screenplay

Producers

Michael Weber
,
Viola Fügen
,
Eitan Mansuri
,
Cedomir Kolar
,
Marc Baschet
,
Michel Merkt

Photography

Giora Bejach

Editors

Arik Lahav Leibovich
,
Guy Nemesh

Production designer

Arad Sawat

Costume designer

Hila Bargiel

Music

Ophir Leibovitch
,
Amit Poznansky

With

Lior Ashkenazi (Michael)
,
Sarah Adler (Dafna)
,
Yonatan Shiray (Jonathan)
,
Shira Haas (Alma)
,
Gefen Barkai (Squad Commander)
,
Dekel Adin (soldier rolling cans)
,
Shaul Amir (soldier with headphones)
,
Itay Exlroad (dancer soldier)
,
Danny Isserles (official military officer)
,
Itamar Rotschild (religion officer)
,
Roi Miller (military M.D)
,
Arie Tcherner (high ranking officer)
,
Yehuda Almagor (Michael’s brother)
,
Karin Ugowski (Michael’s mother)

Festivals

Venice
,
Telluride
,
Toronto
,
London 2017; Sundance
,
Rotterdam 2018

Awards

Grand Jury Prize
,
Venice Film Festival 2017

An unsettling vision of military service pervading everyday Israeli life, Samuel Maoz’s (Lebanon) visceral and startlingly unpredicable film centres on a Tel Aviv couple coping with the death of their son, a soldier stationed in the middle of nowhere.

“Maoz’s marvelous, harrowing drama about death and life in Israel marches boldly through the no-man’s-land between realism and surrealism. It’s a prize collection of paradoxes, combining an intimate, eviscerating depiction of parental grief over a serviceman’s death with an empathic, absurdist rendering of young Israeli Defence Force soldiers manning a remote and otherworldly roadblock…

Foxtrot carries the excitement and punch of a fearless writer-director tackling contemporary material with a bracing cocktail of potent traditional drama, wild black comedy, and serrated style. [It all] comes together as a complex plea for honesty, openness, frankness, and forgiveness. The movie is also, incidentally, a spectacularly effective antiwar film, focusing on the randomness and cruelty of life lived on military roads... Its final image registers like a blow to the chest. It’s a shot that should be seen around the world.” — Michael Sragow, Film Comment

“A formally gorgeous piece of work… [Foxtrot] contains some of the most striking, memorable imagery of the year… It’s a film designed to move you with its depiction of senseless tragedy but also to spark that part of your thinking process that only moviemaking can tap… This multi-talented filmmaker has taken that darkness and turned it into something unforgettable for everyone who sees it.” — Brian Tallerico, RogerEbert.com