Docs For Education

July 13, 2012

Dear Friends,

I am very proud to be able to represent the award-winning documentary film To See If I'm Smiling by Tamar Yarom.

The film won over 10 festival prizes, was screened over 50 film festivals, was purchased by more than ten TV broadcasters and over 70 university libraries. I choose to represent this film because I believe it has great educational value.

I myself served in the west bank and my daughter as well. There is a constant dilemma as soldier, as a father and as a citizen what is the right thing to do in such situations of moral dilemmas. The film invites the viewer to ask himself as well, what would I do in such situations, how would I behave.

To See If I'm Smiling

Synopsis: Six Israeli women give a personal account about their life in the Israeli Army, in the Occupied Territories. A female point of view on the drama of an unending war, on the moral challenges the soldiers faced at the encounter with the Palestinian population. The women look back critically at the way they handled the power that was placed in their hands at the young age of eighteen. Questions that were not dealt with during the service are raised today with great pain.

“Like a short, sharp blow to the solar plexus, Tamar Yarom's hour long docu stuns with raw, unfiltered emotion as six Israeli women recount the horrors they saw and perpetrated during their obligatory military service in the Occupied Territories. Behind its almost unbearable directness and unmistakable authenticity, the brilliantly edited docu is assembled with fugue-like precision, counterpointing trauma-laden memories with generic footage of an ongoing Palestinian surreality, the women's distinctive voices interweaving in complex harmonies.” — Ronnie Scheib, Variety

This film was winner of the Silver Wolf Award – IDFA International Documentary Film Festival, The Netherlands, 2007, and received the Special Jury Award - Hot Docs International Documentary Festival, Toronto, Canada, 2008. Click here to see a full list of award and festivals.

Best
Nahum Laufer
Docs For Education



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