Foxtrot (2017 Film)

Michael and Dafna Feldman, a middle-class Tel Aviv couple, are told that their son Yonatan has fallen while serving as a soldier.[4] The film moves between their apartment and an isolated military roadblock, connecting the parents’ experiences with those of their son far from home.[8][4] Its three sections differ in style and tone, with the opening and closing acts centered on the family and the middle act on Yonatan’s service.[4]

The cast includes Lior Ashkenazi, Sarah Adler, Yonatan Shiray, Gefen Barkai, Yehuda Almagor, and Shira Haas.[8] The film runs for 108 minutes and is in Hebrew.[1] An Israeli, German, French, and Swiss co-production, it had its interior scenes filmed in a German studio.[4] Its title refers to a slow ballroom dance, which Maoz used as an image for movement that returns to its starting point.[2][8]

Maoz traced the film’s starting point to an incident involving his daughter during the Second Intifada.[9] After insisting that she take her usual No. 5 bus rather than a taxi, he heard that a bus on the route had been bombed and was unable to reach her for approximately an hour.[9] She had missed the bus that exploded and returned home on the next one.[9] He said that the experience led him to explore the boundary between what people can control and what lies beyond their control.[9]

Work on the film took about four years, during which Maoz refined a visual approach ranging from close-ups of actors’ faces to wide shots of northern-border landscapes.[9] He described his exacting approach to filming with the statement, “I don’t cut until the shot is perfect.”[9] Recalling an earlier filmmaking experiment, he said that he had received an 8-mm camera from his father for his bar mitzvah, destroyed it by placing it on railway tracks to film an approaching train, and received a replacement from his father the following day.[9]

Foxtrot was selected for the official competition at Venice, where it competed for the Golden Lion.[8] This marked Maoz’s return to the competition after his first feature, Lebanon, won the Golden Lion in 2009.[8] Following its world premiere at Venice, Foxtrot was scheduled for the Toronto and Haifa festivals.[10] Its Israeli release plans called for preview screenings beginning September 21, 2017, followed by a wider release on September 28.[6]

The opening act contrasts the Feldmans’ art-filled apartment with their sudden grief: Dafna faints, while Michael becomes numb and proceeds through the immediate demands surrounding the reported death.[1] These include funeral arrangements, instructions to drink water hourly, and the task of telling his mother, who has cognitive difficulties, that Yonatan has died.[1] The father’s reaction is also connected to a traumatic experience from his own military service in Lebanon.[4]

At the remote outpost in the middle act, Yonatan and his fellow soldiers endure an isolated routine in which the passage of camels can become a highlight of the day.[1] Without internet access, they listen to old love songs and roll cans of prepared meat across the floor to measure how quickly their living container is sinking into the sand.[1] Their duties include searching Palestinians traveling along the road, before an act of violence interrupts the routine.[4]

The final act returns to the parents and their response to tragedy.[4] Across the narrative, details that initially appear incidental—including floor tiles, a painting, a nursing-home dance class, and birds—acquire significance as the story develops.[1] The film’s visual imagery also includes a bowl of oranges beside a laptop displaying a soldier’s death notice, a pairing Maoz connected to his description of the country’s story as “oranges and death notices.”[11]

Maoz conceived the story as a Greek tragedy in which a hero creates his own punishment, resists those attempting to save him, and fails to foresee the consequences of his actions.[2] He called fate the film’s “spine” and described the roadblock as an allegorical setting rather than a particular, realistically represented checkpoint.[2]

At the 74th Venice Film Festival in 2017, Foxtrot won the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize, the festival’s second-ranking award after the Golden Lion.[5][6] It was the first Israeli film to receive that prize.[6] Maoz dedicated the award to Israeli Film Fund head Katriel Schory, praising his defense of freedom of expression and artistic integrity.[6]

The film received 13 Ophir nominations and won eight awards in September 2017.[10][5] Its wins were for best feature film; direction, for Samuel Maoz; leading actor, for Lior Ashkenazi; cinematography, for Giora Bejach; editing, for Guy Nemesh and Arik Lahav-Leibovitz; art direction, for Arad Sawat; original score, for Ofir Leibovitch and Amit Poznansky; and sound, for Alex Claude.[5] The best-film award made Foxtrot Israel’s submission for the Academy Award for Foreign Language Film.[5] The National Board of Review also named it Best Foreign Language Film.[12]

Foxtrot advanced to the nine-film shortlist for the 90th Academy Awards’ foreign-language-film category, selected from 92 films, but did not reach the final five nominees announced on January 23, 2018.[3] Maoz said the omission initially shocked him and brought pain and a “temporary depression.”[13] Reflecting on the disappointment, he wrote that “the real joy comes in the artistic process – in the moments between ‘action’ and ‘cut.’”[13]

In 2018, Foxtrot opened the Israeli Film Festival in Paris.[14] Most of the festival’s more than 35 screenings played to full or nearly full houses, and the event set an attendance record.[14]

The foxtrot’s return to the same position provided Maoz with a metaphor for what he called an “endless traumatic circle.”[2] He connected Michael’s repression and denial to a generational pattern, explaining that his generation—the second after the Holocaust—had been discouraged from complaining to parents and teachers.[2] He also described an expectation that soldiers returning from war should “be a man” and overcome their experiences.[2]

Maoz presented the roadblock as a “microcosm” of Israeli society, expressing his view of a society whose anxiety and perceptions were shaped by past trauma.[2] The film’s family story and military episode thus formed parts of his exploration of fate, responsibility, and the consequences of attempts to control events.[2][9] Defending his critical approach at Venice, he said: “If I criticize the place I live, I do it because I worry. I do it because I want to protect it. I do it from love.”[6]

Culture Minister Miri Regev condemned the film’s portrayal of the IDF as false and harmful, describing it as incitement and arguing against state funding for films she considered propaganda against Israel.[6] She singled out a scene depicting Israeli soldiers killing and burying an Arab family.[15] Maoz responded that Regev had not seen the film, while the filmmakers characterized the checkpoint sequence as surreal rather than a realistic depiction of military conduct.[7] He also argued that criticism should not cause its authors to be treated as traitors.[6]

The dispute extended to the Paris festival: Regev pressured the Foreign Ministry to stop funding it and instructed Israel’s ambassador to France not to attend the opening.[14] Festival president Hélène Schoumann said the controversy helped sponsors from the French Jewish community screen the film in advance.[14] After Foxtrot failed to secure an Oscar nomination, Regev said the Academy’s decision had “saved us from shame and disappointment.”[13]