Lebanon (Film)

Four young Israeli soldiers inside a tank form the center of Lebanon, which takes place at the beginning of the First Lebanon War in June 1982.[4][6] The film follows their mission in southern Lebanon and presents combat largely from their position inside the vehicle, rather than through an unrestricted view of the battlefield.[1][3] The soldiers are portrayed as roughly twenty years old, without prior involvement in violence, suddenly confronting an immediate threat to their lives.[4]

The tank’s confinement intensifies the crew’s fear and sense of entrapment.[5] Casualties, confusion, and tension between survival and morality shape the story.[4][5] Its central gunner, Shmuel, is based on Maoz himself.[3]

Maoz drew the film from his experience as a gunner in a four-man Israeli tank crew that entered a Lebanese village early in the 1982 war.[7] He later described the work as a personal story based on his wartime memories.[2] He suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, and Lebanon, released in 2009, was his first feature film.[7][2]

After studying filmmaking at Beit Zvi in the 1980s, Maoz tried for years to write about the war but repeatedly stopped when memories of the smell of burning flesh returned.[8] He resumed writing in 2006, at the age of 45, partly in response to television coverage of the Second Lebanon War and his anger over it, and completed the screenplay within a few weeks.[8] He also recalled being shocked by the thought that babies born during the First Lebanon War had grown up and died in the later conflict.[3]

The production received support from the Israel Film Fund.[2] The fund’s director, Katriel Shachori, recalled that Maoz visibly trembled while presenting the project at a Jerusalem film festival pitch and remained deeply affected by his wartime experience.[2] Uri Sabag and Einat Bikel co-produced the film.[6]

Lebanon was screened at the Jerusalem Film Festival in July 2009.[5] It was rejected by the Berlin and Cannes film festivals before winning the Golden Lion at Venice that September.[7] After the Venice award, Sony Pictures Classics acquired it for United States distribution, and the film was also screened at festivals around the world.[3][9]

The story begins on the first day of the war, when the tank accompanies a paratrooper unit sent to search a town that has already been bombed.[10] A navigation error takes the force into an area controlled by Syrian commandos, and two fighters from the Christian Phalange are sent to help extract it.[10] Trapped in the center of the devastated town, the soldiers barely escape.[6]

Yoav Donat plays Shmuel, the gunner; Itay Tiran plays Assi, the tank commander; Oshri Cohen plays Herzl; and Michael Moshonov plays Yigal.[4] The cast also includes Zohar Strauss as Jamil and Dudu Tassa as a Syrian captive.[4]

Apart from its opening and closing scenes, the film was shot from inside the tank.[3] Events outside are seen through the gunner’s sight and its crosshairs, restricting the audience’s visual access to the battlefield.[3] Maoz intended viewers to encounter the war through the crew’s restricted perspective and described his aim as creating an emotional understanding of what happens in a soldier’s mind during war.[3]

Only about 30 percent of the film contains dialogue; the remainder shows the soldiers and what they are seeing.[8] Sound also conveys events taking place outside the tank.[11] The film depicts the crew’s claustrophobia alongside the confusion of combat and the casualties suffered by soldiers and civilians.[11][5]

One scene places the tank soldiers in a banana grove, where they must decide whether to shoot at men in civilian clothes traveling in a sedan.[8] Maoz said the scene corresponded directly to an event he experienced and described its dilemma as a choice between endangering the soldiers and possibly killing an innocent person.[8] He connected the film more broadly to his feelings of guilt and responsibility for having been present and having killed people.[8]

Maoz chose the soldiers’ first day in enemy territory as the setting because he regarded it as a period of shock before the survival instinct took over.[8] Explaining the film’s moral framing, he said: “This isn't a movie about good guys and bad guys. The bad guy is the war.”[8]

On September 12, 2009, Lebanon won the Golden Lion at the 66th Venice International Film Festival, becoming the first Israeli film to receive the award.[1] The Golden Lion was introduced in 1949 and is considered one of the film industry’s leading prizes; Venice is the oldest international film festival.[1]

At the closing ceremony, Maoz dedicated the award to people who return from war physically safe but continue to carry its memories within them.[6] He recalled a twenty-minute standing ovation and said, “I cried. I haven't cried like that in 27 years,” describing that response as the biggest prize he took from the festival.[8]

The film received ten nominations at the 2009 Ophir Awards, Israel’s Academy Awards.[7] It won four awards: supporting actor for Zohar Strauss, cinematography, sound design, and art direction.[1][11] Although nominated for best film, it lost that prize to Ajami, which consequently became Israel’s nominee for best foreign-language film at the 2010 Oscars.[1]

At the 2010 European Film Awards, Lebanon received two awards: the Discovery Award for Maoz and the cinematography award for Giora Bejach.[12]

The film’s concentration on Israeli soldiers’ experience drew objections in Lebanese newspapers and independent blogs.[13] Critics argued that it foregrounded the suffering of the Israeli crew while excluding Lebanese victims and the enemy’s perspective.[13] The film was not to be screened in Lebanon because of the boycott of Israeli products and works.[13]

The film also portrays confusion among the soldiers and fear among commanders, while its story raises moral questions about conduct in combat.[6][5] Maoz presented the film’s central conflict as the destructive experience of war rather than a division between good and bad people.[8]