[Audio] Rencontre avec Samuel Maoz qui a remporté le Lion d’argent à la Mostra de Venise 2017 avec Foxtrot – J:MAG. Samuel Maoz, réalisateur israélien, invité au Festival International de Films de Fribourg, a poursuivi son périple suisse en passant par Genève à l’occasion de la présentation de son second long métrage, Foxtrot aux Cinémas du Grütli.
Lebanon, son premier long-métrage de fiction, avait obtenu le Lion d’or à la Mostra de Venise en 2009 et son deuxième film, Foxtrot, a remporté le Lion d’argent également à la Mostra de Venise, cette fois en 2017. Il y a vingt ans, l’écrivain et réalisateur israélien Samuel Maoz a refusé de donner de l’argent à sa fille pour prendre un taxi alors qu’elle était en retard pour aller à l’école. Il l’a envoyée à un arrêt d’autobus. Vingt minutes plus tard il entendait que la ligne de bus qu’elle prenait avait été touchée par une attaque terroriste.
Firouz E. . © j:mag Tous droits réservés. ‘Foxtrot’ Director On The Nature Of Israel’s “Collective Trauma” While Samuel Maoz’s Israeli Oscar entry Foxtrot was tremendously popular at the Venice Film Festival, taking the Grand Jury Prize, among other recognitions, it hasn’t been quite so popular in Israel itself, generating a great deal of controversy in Maoz’s homeland. “Someone wrote me an email that said he was waiting for me outside my building. He wrote me that when I went out, he would throw acid on my face because they wanted me to be blind and not do films anymore,” Maoz recalls. “Someone else wrote me that I have a beautiful daughter and she wouldn’t be beautiful very soon. Things like that. I was surprised to see that our Minister of Culture attacked the film—without seeing it, by the way — and she did it in exactly the same way the film talks about.” Set in Tel Aviv, the film follows a couple who learn that their soldier son has died in the line of duty, then flashing back to the son’s experience of military service in the days leading up to his death.
Interview: Samuel Maoz - Foxtrot - IONCINEMA.com. It’s been almost a full decade since Venice Golden Lion 2009’s Lebanon (check out our 2009 interview), so it was with considerable anticipation and curiosity as to how far Samuel Maoz might move away (or closer to) from a politicized text or militarized discourse. Embedded with a keen sense of humor and inventiveness, Foxtrot is sorted out as a creative triptych where tragedy has a funny way to sort out an emancipated destiny — being set “free” comes at a cost. Foxtrot began its film festival circuit life at Venice winning the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize and subsequently Toronto (we were on hand for the premiere’s Q&A) before a last dip at Sundance during the Academy Awards Foreign language short list run. Sony Pictures Classics gave this a qualifying opening, opened March 2nd, and its currently expanding into new markets during its limited engagement run.
Here is my sit-down with the Samuel Maoz. Foxtrot's Samuel Maoz talks fate, potted meat, ministerial controversy. Samuel Maoz, director of the award-winning movie “Foxtrot,” and Times of Israel editor David Horovitz touched on the controversy surrounding the film, but also on Maoz’s personal journey and craft as a filmmaker, in a 25-minute onstage conversation following a Sunday night, October 15 English-subtitled screening of the film in Jerusalem.
The latest Times of Israel Presents event was held at the Lev Smadar Theater, which was sold out. It was the first of two ToI screenings of the film — “Foxtrot” was also screened with English subtitles in Tel Aviv on Monday to an audience of over 400 — as locals streamed in to view a film that has received so much press for both its messages and the reactions it has stirred, particularly from Culture Minister Miri Regev, who considers it to be anti-Israel. Maoz touched on questions of fate, repression and denial, Israeli society, the Holocaust, the army and Israeli leadership. Horovitz noted that the film is not typical entertainment. [Audio] Rencontre avec Samuel Maoz qui a remporté le Lion d’argent à la Mostra de Venise 2017 avec Foxtrot – J:MAG. ‘Foxtrot’ Director On The Nature Of Israel’s “Collective Trauma” Interview: Samuel Maoz - Foxtrot - IONCINEMA.com.
Foxtrot's Samuel Maoz talks fate, potted meat, ministerial controversy. Foxtrot. Samuel Maoz: my life at war and my hopes for peace | Film. Samuel Maoz was 20 years old when he killed a man for the first time. It was 1982 and Israel had recently begun fighting a war against the PLO and Syria in Lebanon, a campaign which, although supposed to last for just three weeks, would continue, in various guises, for 18 bloody and horrifying years. Maoz, an Israeli soldier by dint of the fact that he was still doing his national service when the war began, was a member of the tank corps. Specifically, he was a gunner. At 6.15am on 6 June, in the stony hills of southern Lebanon, he looked down the sight of the gun of his rackety, ageing tank.
In the crosshairs was a small truck. It was speeding down a dirt track towards him, its middle-aged Arab driver shouting and gesticulating wildly. Maoz did not know if this man was the enemy. Maoz was in Lebanon for 45 days. When he got home, Maoz was considered lucky. "For the next 25 years, Maoz said nothing. Then, in 2006, Israel again invaded Lebanon. "Normal people can't kill.
And now? Director of Israel's 'Foxtrot' responds to his critics in government. Samuel Maoz: Foxtrot's director interviewed. It is unlikely Samuel Maoz was surprised by the attack on his new film, Foxtrot, by Israel’s Cultural Minister, Miri Regev, before its world premiere at the 74th Venice International Film Festival last month. After all, the former Israeli soldier had chosen to explore his country’s psychic wounds through a story involving the IDF. This was enough to make Regev claim the director had “defamed” the most “moral army in the world” even though she had not yet seen the film.
Maoz, 55, does show bored young soldiers at a desert roadblock humiliating Palestinians, and worse, but the section is allegorical, and has a broader meaning — especially for Israelis, the film-maker hopes — beyond the specifics of the situation and setting. He sees the roadblock, with its alternating periods of boredom, tension and panic, as a “microcosm of an anxious society with a distorted perception that comes out of a terrible past trauma.” This has helped give rise to “an endless traumatic situation,” he says.