Greetings again from the darkness. The most dreaded knock on the door. Every parent or spouse of someone who has served their country during war time fully understands that indescribable feeling of opening the door and seeing uniformed soldiers waiting to deliver the worst possible news. That knock is how Israeli writer/director Samuel Maoz (LEBANON, 2009) chooses to open his film. Knowing her son Daniel is dead sends Daphna (Sarah Adler) into hysterics, and the experienced messengers know to administer something to help her relax and sleep. Her husband Michael (Lior Ashkenazi, FOOTNOTE) stands stunned, mostly unable to respond.

What follows is one of the most stunning first Act performances we've seen on the big screen. That is not hyperbole. Mr. Ashkenazi is remarkable over the first approximately 20 minutes as a parent in shock, experiencing devastating grief. The news is debilitating to his physical and mental being. Additionally, the filmmaking during this segment is quite something to behold. The close-ups add a heavy dose of humanity, while the terrific overhead camera angle presents Michael as trapped, while also adding to the disorientation that is so key. The one-hour alarm set to remind him to "drink some water" would be humorous if not for the fact that its structure prevents the man from totally breaking down.

The second Act takes us away from Daphna's and Michael's contemporary Tel Aviv apartment and plops us into a remote military outpost where 4 young soldiers are charged with guarding a road passage. Thanks to this boring assignment, the young men find ways of adding interest to their days: timing canned goods that roll down the ever-increasing slope of their sinking-in-the-muck domicile container, raising the bar for the periodic camel that lopes by, and giving the rare passers-by a bit of a hard time as their ID's are checked. 'Of course, this is war territory, so when something goes wrong, it goes terribly and horrifically wrong.

Our final Act takes us back to the original apartment as Michael, Daphna and their daughter are working to reconcile their feelings and somehow re-assemble the pieces of their shattered lives ... though the shifts from that heartbreaking first Act are what sets the script apart from so many movies. Cinematographer Giora Bejach continues the exemplary camera work during this curious segment that leaves us feeling somewhat uncertain at first.

This family is stuck in the war that never ends. Like so many in the area, they carry burdens, guilt and grief that, like the war, also never ends. That first Act is transcendent filmmaking and acting, and the three acts work together as a prime example of the melding of visual and emotional storytelling. Most of the film takes place in one of two locales, and it's the subtleties in each shot that tell us what we must know. And yes, the foxtrot dance does play a role, but like most of this film, it's best discovered on your own.

The loss of a child can bring unspeakable sorrow, caught in its essence by Samuel Moaz's Foxtrot a stunning study of an Israeli family's tragedy. Their fallen son is not just the Feldman family's loss; it can be an emblem of the Israeli storied toughness set against the absurdity of its fight and the cost to a relatively small but prominent world population.

Basically a tripartite film, Foxtrot's first section languishes with the father, Michael (Lior Ashkenazi), as he responds to the universal call of two soldiers coming up their sidewalk, announcing the death to a fainting mother, Daphna (Sarah Adler). Moaz's shots are largely close up and over head both intended for us to feel his pain and his alienation. Never do these shots seem artsy; they are where we would be if we could enter Michael's space and view him from a judgment pov.

For the second part, which shows the son, Jonathan (Yonotan Shiray), at a desert outpost, the camera is more distant and the light much brighter. As the narrative shows a soldier dancing with a rifle and an animated black and white sequence accompanied by a suckled breast, the tone has changed to playful and absurd. This airy sequence is appropriately comical to heighten the daily tragedies.

Part three is the natural outcome of grief, itself accompanied by the foxtrot of the title, a simple dance to counter the daunting complexity of death and its aftermath. The film is a study of loss and grief exacerbated by a gritty culture that does not negotiate with the enemy and constantly deals with the Holocaust in its grief-laden memory.

All this and more is in a remarkably deep and sometimes light study of war and its outcomes. Foxtrot was Israel's entry in the Oscar sweepstakes this year and deserving its considerable attention.

Foxtrot is a movie about fate, life, death, war, youth, love and dancing. Flawless beauty resides in almost every aspect of the film; the amazing direction, vivid cinematography and incredibly intense acting perfectly portrait a fabulous 3-act tragedy. This film is a joy to watch and a terrific work of art.

This film was not well received by the Israeli military, because it contains severe criticism to them. A surprising movie, going in unexpected directions many times during its narrative. It was a strong candidate for best foreign film at the Oscars, but the Israeli government lobbied (and succeeded) to keep it out of the competition. A pity, since the directing is absolutely brilliant.

As others have pointed out, this is a 3-act film. Act 1 provides a chilling view of the military precision of the Israeli military's process for informing a family of a tragedy. Act 2 provides a view of Foxtrot outpost, a checkpoint guarding some deserted road. There is the general boredom, combined with occasions of high anxiety, where any car to be checked could have suicide bombers. In Act 3, the family's unsuccessful attempt to see their son's body leads to more drama, with an ending that I consider too neat - hence my low score on the movie.

Neither side behaved well in the Israeli controversy over Foxtrot. The Minister of Culture condemned the movie without seeing it, and the filmmakers tried to weasel out by claiming surrealism as a form of artistic license. The film isn't surrealistic, although it's expressionistic.

The first section is the most expressionistic, packed with overhead shots that feature a weirdly patterned floor. For a while, you wonder whether master actor Lior Ashkenazi has been handed the challenge of playing his part with no lines at all as his character receives and absorbs the notification that his son has fallen in the line of duty. That turns out not to be the case, but to an extent he does remain, throughout this section, a kind of Everyman defined by his situation rather than by any specific background we're aware of.

The second section is what made the Minister of Culture grumpy. It shows a soldier making an error of split-second judgment with terrible consequences, followed by a cover-up. The accusation against the movie was that such things don't happen in the Israeli army. I was less disturbed by the soldier's error (people are people), and even by the cover-up (bureaucracies are bureaucracies) than by the coverer-up, an officer made to look like a boulder- bodied ogre. He seems to taint everyone with evil, and coincidentally or not, his appearance marks the point where the movie-- in my opinion-- loses its footing.

The first and second sections hinted at intriguing parallels between the generations, as well as a sense of recurring themes, but the third section invests in effortfully tying together what didn't need any such effort and in driving the plot forward past where it could have gracefully ended. It was a little like hearing a joke explained after you've already laughed at it, although Foxtrot certainly doesn't abound in laughs. It's a well-acted, philosophically contemplative film that just goes on for a little too long.

Director Samuel Maoz' feature follow-up to his terrific 2009 war picture LEBANON is a strange, but ultimately moving, tale. Whereas LEBANON took place entirely within a tank on the battlefield, Maoz here takes an entirely different approach.

The story begins with a soldier's family being informed of terrible news about their son Jonathan (Yonaton Shiray). The parents, Michael (Lior Ashkenazi) and Daphna (Sarah Adler) react with appropriate shock and even catatonia in Daphna's case. We are then brought to the war zone and see what actually occurred with Jonathan and his troops. The third act returns us to the parents home.

I am fighting harder than usual to avoid spoilers here. Not just for the obvious reasons, but, because FOXTROT is movie built upon the viewer's reactions to the three acts - and, how they work with and against one another.

Again, in contrast to the self-contained structure of LEBANON, here Moaz shifts FOXTROT into several directions - intense grief, dark satire, tense drama, an unexpected jump cut in time and even a short X-rated animated sequence. It's a heady experiment. It may not all work smoothly (almost by its very nature, it cannot), but, together it's a strong work. It all culminates in a long sequence that is, in turn, haunting, touching, humorous and all together devastating. Michael the father observes that the Foxtrot is a dance where no matter where you begin, you end up in the same spot. But, as a movie, FOXTROT is much more than standing still - it moves you deeply.

I am not sure why, but there's just something about this movie that brings warmth to my heart. I can't say that there's something inherently unique about its message, but the way that it communicated it really resonated with me. There is no evil in this film that causes pain to characters but rather just unfortunate events. And it's not someone's fault too. I think that this is a movie about the unnecessary suffering that we all have to live through. This message is often delivered with unnecessary pretentiousness and I was happy to feel none in this film.

There were a couple of lines that felt unnecessary, but it is because the whole movie is quite subtle and communicates a lot without words so these lines felt out of place.

The cinematography is also great, although it is not something I often draw attention to. Oh, and the acting is absolutely stellar, especially one of the father, I couldn't take my eyes off his performance.

I am upset that nobody I know saw this movie but I sure will recommend it to as many people as possible from now on so it gets credit it deserves.

This movie touches an important issue and the idea was very promising. However Foxtrot is so slow, so boring that after 10 minutes of watching I almost fell asleep. What the makers of Foxtrot wanted to tell us? That a group of Israeli young zombies is fighting unnessesary war with an unknown enemy? This is an absolutely false suggestion. The war is not defined by Israelis and their enemy is very well known. The story with buried Arab car and an attempt by Israeli commander to cover it up is absolutely implausable. Never happened and couldn't happen. Three Arabs are killed and nobody is going to investigate it? That's a pure propagandistic drivel. Not worth to watch. It's an artistic failure of an international team.

'Foxtrot' begins with a woman, Dafna (Sarah Adler), opening her front door, seeing who is on the doorstep and immediately fainting. Moments later her husband Michael (Lior Ashkenazi, possibly Israel's busiest actor) is told by three members of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) that his and Dafna's son Jonathan has been killed on military service. The IDF take over everything, arranging the funeral, dispensing sedatives to Dafna and setting alarms on Michael's telephone to remind him to drink every hour. Then the scene shifts and we are at Jonathan's lonely desert outpost, where the soldiers - when not sleeping and eating in a slowly-sinking shipping container - man a grubby checkpoint used most regularly by an unaccompanied camel. A final scene change brings us back to Dafna and Michael on what would have been Jonathan's twentieth birthday.

I found the middle and final segments the most interesting: although not a lot happens at the checkpoint, the segment set there is an interesting study on how boys from comfortable middle-class backgrounds cope when handed guns and forced to live in squalor. The bereaved parents' conversation in the third segment, in which we see how their loss has affected their relationship, is terribly bittersweet. By contrast, the first segment has a curiously episodic feel to it that may be intended to convey how Michael stumbles through the hours immediately after learning of his son's death, but I found rather jarring. On the whole, though, this slow-moving film is well worth watching.

Winner of the Silver Lion at the Venice International Film Festival and Israel's submission to the 2018 Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film, Israeli director Samuel Maoz's ("Lebanon") brilliant and confounding Foxtrot reveals itself less by narrative than by images: A narrow road in an empty stretch of desert, a lonely camel meandering through a checkpoint, a young recruit's gyrating dance in the middle of the road, soldiers in a panic opening fire. Though the images imply condemnation of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the war, and Israel itself, Foxtrot is not an overtly political film but a family drama that has universal meaning to anyone who has suffered the unexpected loss of a loved one. The title suggests that life unfolds like a series of dance steps: Forward, side, and back in a preordained pattern, only to end up in the same place in which it began.

Shown in the format of three connecting stories, in the first segment as Dafna Feldmann (Sarah Adler, "The Cakemaker") opens the front door of her upscale high-rise Tel Aviv apartment, she immediately knows that the look on the faces of officers of the IDF can mean only one thing. "Mr. Feldmann," says the first soldier to Michael (Lior Ashkenazi, "Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer") who is lurking in the background, "I'm sorry there's no easy way to say this. Your son Jonathan (Yonaton Shiray, "A Tale of Love and Darkness") was killed tonight in the line of duty." The officer does not say anything about the circumstances of his death, only that he had "fallen in the line of duty," a military euphemism that puts a brave face on another in an endless stream of deaths to report on.

Speechless, almost catatonic, Michael is told to keep drinking water by the officer who programs his cell phone to ring every hour to remind him. A successful architect, former tank commander, and the son of a survivor of Auschwitz, the tragic news unleashes the hidden rage that Michael has carefully kept from public view, directing it towards the unfeeling military bureaucracy. Fate, Maoz suggests, is not an unyielding emanation from God, but an innate part of a people's legacy passed down through generations. When we learn that his family has roots in the Holocaust, we understand that his paralysis of feeling can be traced to a childhood of quashing his emotions, a situation that creates, "a new generation of victims." Though we can feel Michael's distress, his flashes of cruelty, especially towards his dog, are off-putting and perhaps designed to keep us at an emotional distance.

The second segment takes place in a desolate military checkpoint known as "Foxtrot," a supply road used by Palestinian cars and wandering camels, located somewhere on Israel's northern border. Moving from black comedy to tragedy, the sequence is an almost dreamlike and surreal allegory that provides an absurdist view of the war. The young soldiers, including Michael's son Jonathan, form a four-man guard who have become increasingly bored with the daily routine. They pass the time in their shipping container which serves as a barracks by telling each other stories about their home life, eating unappetizing meals out of cans, and rolling an empty tin of canned meat towards the wall to see how fast their container is sinking into the mud.

In one of the most indelible moments of Foxtrot, Jonathan hugs his rifle and performs an unencumbered joy-filled dance in front of the barracks, a scene reminiscent of Galoup's wild, uninhibited dance that ends Claire Denis' masterful "Beau Travail." Breaking the interminable quiet are cars carrying Palestinians seeking to pass through the checkpoint. Travelers are compelled to sit and wait for long periods of time and, in one instance, a couple dressed for a wedding are humiliated by being forced to stand outside in the pouring rain while the soldiers take their time checking their IDs. When an act of sudden violence against unarmed civilians occurs, an IDF commander covers it up, telling the perpetrators that they will not be punished, that unfortunate things sometimes happen in wars.

In the third sequence, after the passage of several months, the film returns to the Feldmann's apartment as Michael and Dafna, now living apart, meet to remember what would have been Jonathan's twentieth birthday. Still processing their grief, Dafna strikes out at Michael for his weakness that she alleges caused Jonathan's death, but the music of Arvo Pärt's "Spiegel im Spiegel" tells us that, underneath the anger and the grief, their love is graced by the truth of acceptance and reconciliation and that, in the poet Rumi's phrase, "the night ocean is filled with glints of light." Foxtrot has been roundly condemned by Israel's Minister of Culture and Sport, Miri Regev, (who hasn't seen the film) for its "self-flagellation and cooperation with the anti-Israel narrative," calling it "a work of treachery," and asking for the state to end funding for films that can be used as "a weapon of propaganda for our enemies."

In spite of the Minister's comments, Foxtrot won eight Ophir Awards (Israel's Oscar equivalent) including awards for Best Picture, Best Actor (for Ashkenazi), and Best Director. In an interview with The Times of Israel, Maoz responded to the critics by saying that the film was simply meant to open discussion and create dialogue, "If I criticize the place I live," he said, "I do it because I worry." After the recent killing of at least 15 unarmed Palestinians by Israeli soldiers near the barrier separating the Gaza Strip from Israel, an act for which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered neither sympathy nor remorse, perhaps it is time for all of us to worry.

Not only that there is no such thing as bad advertising, but bad advertising can help a lot. The success (public, critics, festivals) of Samuel Maoz's second film 'Foxtrot' may become at some point an example in the text books of cinema and public relations. The critics in Israel (including the Minister of Culture whose office actually supported financially the making of the film) who have trashed the film for its political attitude without seriously discussing it and (some of them, probably) without seeing it just succeeded to create a big fuzz around 'Foxtrot' which will make many Israeli film fans go and see it, and may also draw the attention and increase the international interest. Will the viewers be rewarded with an exceptional cinema experience? Not in my opinion. It's not a bad film, but it also has many disputable parts, and I am not referring only to the political approach. Will it win it an Academy Award? I very much doubt it will even make it through the selection, although, of course, I will be glad to be proved wrong.

The film is built of three different parts, somehow like the three acts of a theater play. They may well be each of them a separate movies, as there are different leading themes in each of the acts, although they are interconnected. The first and the last part takes place in the house of the parents of a soldier, the middle one describes him and his comrades at the location where they are on duty, a a security checkpoint, someplace in an almost lunar landscape, that started to erode and decompose. A quote from Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker comes to mind immediately, it's just that the natural disaster around symbolizes the more universal disaster that is ongoing. I liked especially the first part, which describes so well the nightmare that any Israeli parent who sent his kids to the army fears more than anything else in the world. At some point in time the story breaks and the worse news received by the parents turn to something different and behind their grieving are hidden more darker secrets. The second part includes the problematic scenes and the least that can be said is that the story of the soldiers just out of their childhood put into the impossible situation of policing the local population in the occupied areas is told from a very programmatic point of view. Can such incidents happen in reality? Hard to believe IMO, but they deserve a discussion, and the discussion should be about the events and not about the right to show them on screen. The last part takes us back to the parents home, and the critical approach now shifts against the mid-class Tel Aviv families busy with their neurotics and their own mean small personal traumas, unable to face reality and hiding themselves behind the smoke of grass.

The three episodes have each their merits and their lose points, but they hardly come together, as each seems to carry its own message or more than one. Grief dominates the first, youth faced with war and politics dominate the second, escapism is the main theme of the third. It's a world that seems to have a hard time coming together, and so do the messages of this film that lack shared coherence. The film is full of symbols, too many, some quite good (the road leading to nowhere), some too obvious (the mud, the reclining cabin), some re-circulated from other movies trying to make the parts come together without really succeeding (the camel). When they try to be direct, the makers of the film failed, as in the schematic representation of the soldiers, the local population, and the relation between them. Lior Ashkenazi is fantastic in the first part, but his acting falls into mannerism and is less convincing later. Sarah Adler is a semi-miscast, too young for the role, spends much of the first part under sedation and never lets us understand her relationship with the father or the son. Overall my feeling was that this ambitious film failed in many respects because it tries to say too much and lacks one leading thread. As the dance in the title the story goes ahead, aside, and back, to return to the point where it started. It is still very much a film worth to see, even if some of the viewers will get to see it because of the wrong reasons, while some other will avoid it because of the same wrong reasons.

The foxtrot - a happy, spirited dance - is here a metaphor for quite the contrary: the hopeless ritual in which Israelis and Palestinians find themselves locked. They take a step forward, a step sideways, then it's back to their starting point. Instead of progress there's stasis - a malevolent antagonism and paralysis. With the macro dance not working, you seek comfort in the micro. You dance with your own, smoothing out differences and alienation so you can carry on. That's what Michael and his Dafna do at the end, overcoming their separation. The soldier's solitary dance with his rifle is the alternative to a couple or communal dance - solitary, masturbatory, an unconstructive indulgence. In the national context, citizens adapt to each others' errors and transgressions. They remain united against their common mortal enemy. That's why the army here covers up the accidental murder of the carload of young Palestinians. The film examines the moral cost of surviving in Israel's situation, besieged by a genocidal enemy. A mistaken identity can ruin a whole family of lives. The Feldmans fall into profound grief - till they learn the dead soldier is a stranger with their son's name. We don't see the other Feldman family's pain, but we can guess it. Indeed, the army rabbi's visit here suggests how common these deaths are in Israel, how ritualized their procedure has become. An hourly phone call reminds the bereaved to drink a glass of water. This is the normalization of loss -and it carries a psychological and moral cost. At the first death report Michael is buried in grief, frozen. In his sensitivity every sound registers loud: his body hitting a bed, the dog hammering the door to get in. In his repressed rage Michael kicks his pet, in impulsive anger that that life survived his son. But the dog remains faithful, tentative in his returns but always coming back to him. Like the Israeli citizens persisting under attack, he bears his pain and carries on. But like the other Israelis, the dog is silently bleeding within. Jonathan's actual death - on the trip home Michael insisted upon - splinters the parents' marriage. By now Michael has experienced enough grief to start handling it. He recovers his comfort, joy and marriage - by smoking weed with Dafna. That's the secular alternative to religious consolation. In contrast, Michael's mother has slipped from her nervous breakdown into dementia. Her speaking German instead of Hebrew shows her rooted in her past. She claims to register Jonathan's death -- but then confuses Michael with his brother Avigdor. The film shows a secular Israel. These Feldmans are non-observant. The story of trading the family heirloom Bible for a porn magazine handily conveys at least these Israelis abandoning religious tradition for the modern realities of life. As they face annihilation, pragmatism holds sway. In that existential danger even something commonplace can have soul-wrenching consequences. Hence the three traffic accidents. In the first Michael remains traumatized with unnecessary guilt for having sent another vehicle ahead of his own on the highway - to a mortal mine. That's the guilt hidden beneath the film's innocent opening shot. Only after he finally shares this secret with Dafna can they reconnect. He also feels responsible for his mother's breakdown. Son Jonathan machine guns a car when he mistakes a dropped pop-can for a grenade. If he escapes man's justice, he's killed in an absurd traffic accident en route home. His death, by the way, is absurd enough to be read as divine justice. When Jonathan draws a cartoon of the bulldozer hoisting the car (i.e., his guilt) to bury it, he's recording what his superiors have allowed him to keep secret. Dafna keeps the drawing, unaware of its implication. As Jonathan cartoons his father's Last Bedtime Story, a coming of age ritual, it's important that he include this personal admission of responsibility. There are plenty of justifications for not turning the accident into an international attack on the state fending off annihilation. The use of background artworks shows the care in this film's realization. Dafna's fainting reveals the drawing behind her, a large layering of black squares jumbling into the distance. The emblem of order and stability - the square - here expresses a vertiginous confusion. A high angle shot then spins above Michael against a floor of geometric squares, similarly dizzying and unstable. When Dafna moves the painting into another room it hangs tilted, askew, compounding the instability of even the stable. Michael's den has another black and white abstract painting - a fuzzified horizon line that evokes an ECG. Finally, Jonathan's secularity and sexual awakening are imaged in the washed out pinup girl face on the soldiers' metal barracks. Of course, that emblematic shed is sinking into the mire, endangering its young future. The Israeli government hates this film because that impulsive murder scene might be taken to imply that such IDF errors are frequent not freakish. Or worse, deliberate. But the tensions from Israelis living under constant threat of attack, especially for a handful of young soldiers alone at a remote security point, makes Jonathan's impulse understandable. Writer/director Samuel Moaz makes his focus the Israeli response to the Palestinian threat so he doesn't retell its history. The Palestinian citizenry here are themselves victims of the Palestinian assault against Israel - via Israels' defensive measures. Moaz's subject is the situation's challenge to the Israelis' moral compass. He's examining the Israeli's frozen foxtrot, not the Palestinians'. But the lesson holds for both partners not yet dancing together. This film is an insightful, moving revelation. Its dramatic shifts in tone, with surprises and shock at every turn, make this an emotional roller-coaster. But in framing out the Palestinian attack, in taking that context as understood not restated, the film may be read as suggesting that the Israeli moral compass causes the regional problem. Under existential threat what alternative does Israel have to hard security measures? Where are the Palestinian films that question the genocidal campaign that has for a century prevented their peaceful coexistence? After all, it takes two even to foxtrot. Finally, credit to Moaz's implicit revision of Chekov: A camel planted in Act 2 must go off in Act 5.

I've been expecting to see faster happenings in the movie, but no, I did not. As one drama, it is good in those segments where you can follow the main character's expressions, but on the other hand it is a bit boring because he is not the only character in it and almost all the rest are unconvincing actors. From time to time a director gives us pieces of black humor and that intention drives us not to be rigorous in giving comments. It is specifically in those scenes with four soldiers in shipping container, that is slowly sinking into the muck, and in which they are located to be while guarding the border. The best two things of the movie are those shots made from above and that little cartoon where we can see the story about what happened in the past and why. From my point of view, it is worth seeing, but it is not the perfect masterpiece as we wanted to see.

I saw this film at the 2017 Telluride Film Festival. This film is about the war machine of a country that has been continuously at war. The way families of those killed were treated with machine like efficiency was quite shocking. There are light moments in the film about boredom of serving in the military and how terrible mistakes are made and covered up. This Israeli film is about its continuous conflict, but it could have easily been an American film. Jim Bershon

This highly acclaimed drama from Israel is a thoughtful and deep reflection on how we perceive of the scars that grief and guilt can leave on us. The film follows a patriarch and his wife who are told at the beginning of the film by Israeli army officers that their son was killed in the line of duty. These two parents begin to embark on a seemingly hellish grieving process...for the first 30 minutes. I won't give away what happens next, but the film ends up taking a variety of unique twists and turns through three distinct parts similar to that of a triptych-style narrative. It's not quite what you think it is, that's for sure.

The acting in the film is consistently excellent, particularly the performance of the father. He manages to engage the audience in his seething feelings of sadness and an almost-primal sensation of rage, while still feeling uniquely down-to-earth and relatable. This is an almost impossible trick to pull off. Samuel Maoz clearly knows how to write thoughtful analysis of the society and people of Israel, with a clockwork level of precision--and props to him for that. The pacing in the film's three acts, however, could have been improved and can feel somewhat erratic in the movie's second half. Additionally, the finale of the movie is done in a somewhat peculiar manner that falls a bit short of what would most satisfy the viewer in terms of wrapping up the story. Still, I definitely recommend "Foxtrot" to those interested and thought this was quite a well-made film at the end of the day. 7.5/10

The theme 'war is absurd' has become a cliché that tests the creativity of many a filmmaker. How many ways can you represent the random chaos of shattered lives and senseless destruction? The emotional rollercoaster Foxtrot (2017) hits the high-watermark in originality for the way it deploys grief, social critique, and absurdism to show a different side of war.

The film's four acts defy the conventions of linear storytelling. In the opening seconds, a mother (Sara Adler) sees three soldiers at the door and before they can speak she collapses to the ground. With military precision, the doctor among them administers sedation and tells the father (Lior Askhkenazi) she will sleep for five hours; that's usual, they say. When a son has fallen in the line of duty they expect the father to cope. They leave; another comes to plan just another funeral; then alone, the father furiously paces like a caged beast, crushed by his own emotions. In five hours they return with totally different news.

That plotline alone could fill a movie, but it is merely the first step of an absurdist dance with chaos that goes forward, across, back, then returns to the beginning. In the second act we meet the very much alive son Jonathan (Yonaton Shiray) who is stationed on an isolated checkpoint where the only intruders are camels that have trained the guards to open the boom-gate to let them pass. Bored out of their minds, the four teenage warriors tell each other stories, punctuated by Jonathan's memorable foxtrot dance with his rifle as partner. The third and final acts complete this case study of random chaos; they include a scene one year later where the mother and father commiserate a tragedy and a dissolving marriage. The final seconds of the film match the opening in the way they erupt with the unexpected.

Undoubtedly, this film is anchored by the first 45 minutes in which Lior Askhkenazi gives a tour-de-force performance of going to hell and back. It is also a forensic satire that is beyond war clichés and that has infuriated the Israeli Military establishment. So much is being said in this film, with so few words spent. Small moments are jarring: like a father being told casually that his fallen son was promoted posthumously, as if he is worth more dead than alive, or the mechanically detailed way the military deals with death and bereavement. The camerawork and colour palette superbly set the mood of each act, and the asymmetry of the narrative reflects an alternative and absurdist universe in which war is normalised.

This is powerful cinema, the kind that can sweep you up with its characters, emotions, and story. Then, at the end of the film when the dance is done, you are left in disbelief at the banality of humanity. Watch for Foxtrotin Best Foreign Film award.

Michael and Dafna Feldmann (Lior Ashkenazi and Sarah Adler) are a well-off Tel Aviv couple who have just received news that their young adult son was killed while on military duty.

The narrative is told in three segments of equal length. The first exposes the family's reaction to the bad news; the second takes place in an isolated military checkpoint; the third returns to the Feldmann family home.

Each segment has its own unique style. The first is much like the films of Ingmar Bergman with a lot of silent brooding, overhead shots, and many close-ups. It succeeds in exposing the physical toll of heartbreaking grief. There is also a fascinating scene involving a relative who has dementia. Its conclusion is, to say the least, shocking.

The second segment seems dull in the beginning but this is likely deliberate as a way for the viewer to experience the lives of the four young soldiers at the checkpoint. They are living in terrible, secluded conditions with little happening in their daily routine. The dullness certainly ends in a couple of scenes near the end of this section - scenes which are a harsh critique of the Israeli military itself. The climactic conclusion of this segment is deliberately skipped and revealed only at the end via flashback.

The final segment is the most fascinating. It leaves the viewer in the place of trying to understand what happened at the end of the second segment and the pieces gradually fit before the flashback scene in the epilogue. This segment also highlights the great acting talents of Ashkenazi and Adler whose ensemble is deeply touching especially during a moment of unexpected laughter.

The talents of director/writer Samuel Maoz are on great display. In the most subtle of ways, he draws in the viewer to feel what the characters feel. And his screenplay is exemplary in its exposure of the wickedness of life and fate and for its very unique structure.

OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT: Screenplay by Samuel Maoz

'Foxtrot' was by no means an easy film to watch but was incredibly satisfying. The cinematography was stunning throughout - virtually every shot is a work of art in itself. Some of the camera angles in the early part of the film had my head spinning and my nerves jittering, perfectly reflecting the emotions of the actors on screen. The slow languid pace of the scenes at the checkpoint brilliantly reflect the boredom of the soldiers posted there and when 'the thing' happens it is rendered even more shocking because of all the quiet and routine that has gone before. Images and events from this film keep replaying in my mind a good week after I watched it. Definately recommended.

What a stupid movie of a man who begins abusing his dog. A dog that is only trying to be compassionate to this man who showed sorrow. He kicks the dog at the beginning. I watched very little after that because it was simply stupid.

The film is unique in that it creates emotional stress by constructing a sense of space. The comical backtracking at the end is a genius. In contrast, some dialogues are somewhat lengthy. The integration between the fatalistic theme and poetic photography failed to be tuned to the best. Therefore, when many of the seemingly idle (not actually) shots are already stunning enough, the film's over-construction in the play seems to be somewhat slightly redundant.

Foxtrot is a new European movie in the Hebrew language that premiered back in 2017 and was Israel's official submission to the Academy Awards last year where it managed to make the final 9, but eventually came short on the nomination. it runs for almost 2 hours and was written and directed by Samuel Maoz, his second full feature film. The cast includes mostly Israeli actors with Lior Ashkenazi being the standout easily. You can divide the film into three segments basically. Number one is the father's story, number 2 is the young man's story, number 3 is the parents' story with more focus on the mother this time. I would say that the first segment is really great, definitely above 6 out of 10, number 2 is okay and number 3 is solid, but does not add as much as I wanted it to and eventually the main reason why I did not give it a higher rating overall. This is the story of a family's reaction to the death of their son who is working in the military. Just like his father did, which is among the most interesting parallels the film has to offer. I also l´really liked the parts very early on when the family is informed about the death as well a bit later when they find out about a "terrible" error that happened. The latter is probably the most gripping moment of the entire movie and that means quite something as the film has to offer quite a few of these. As for the middle part, it took a while to really draw me in, but when it does, then it did really well. The parallel between the young men measuring the time with the help of this tin can and the tin can inside of the car falling out and resulting in tragedy is really memorable. Sadly, as good as this escalation moment was, it also felt a bit too much with what happened with the Feldmann son earlier and how it's not just tragedy around his family, but surrounding him too. This becomes especially clear when he is called out of action at the very same time they talk about the event to the investigator. Well, there isn't too much investigation. In the middle part, the film lives through the suspense if the Feldmann we see in there will live or die and that was done pretty nicely, even if we actually know that this was not a military operation, but the post we heard about earlier, so most likely he is going to live. Nonetheless, the suspense, maybe fear, could be felt in the audience. As for the last segment, I am really not sure what to think of it. Initially, I thought it was non-chronological and the period of time in-between when they don't know yet their son is alive. But with the very final shot, it actually could have been the very last scenes chronologically that we see about the entire movie. The woman's role there (with her being unconscious early on) lets me think that it was not in-between the wrong information and positive solution. The talk about the potential abortion from the mother makes it even more unclear. And we did not even touch the potential subject of dream sequences and fiction. Perhaps it is necessary to see the entire film again to understand it better in terms of context. Maybe that final shot with another crucial event happening (not gonna spoil anything here) was also a bit over the top in creating additional drama and eventually it is just too much happening, even if it's war times. The camel parallel also did not feel spoton I must say. Same about the dance sequence that is included on two occasions, the first felt somewhat right, also interesting with the addition of music, but the last not so much and I did not see the general significance therewhere I would say it makes sense that the overall film is named like that. That's just minor criticisms though. I really wish the film could have kept the level of quality overall that it starts with in the first 45 minutes. It's a brilliant character study there with Ashkenazi giving an outstanding performance of a man stuck between his grief and aggression. He is also linked directly later on to the bizarre erotic comic book sequences and it was quite a challenge to make these work, but I believe Maoz managed to succeed and that makes the film even more impressive. So all in all, a very tense watch with some truly great moments for sure. It's nice to see quality films coming from Israel again these days, there seems to be some great potential in recent years, also with almost all of these having some kind of political/war background, which is a genre that always needs new impressve works. Watch this one, you will not regret it.

Very bad directing1 The movie cannot take you in the story, very unnatural and inventive.

Https://dixonsbl0g.blogspot.com/2018/04/new-movie-review-foxtrot.html

Foxtrot is an Israeli movie that begins as an analysis of grief and evolves into something much more. The opening scene shows Israeli soldiers informing a couple that their son has been killed in the line of duty. The film then begins to analyze the couples' reaction. This concept would be enough for most movies, but Foxtrot is not content to accept that a soldier's death is just a part of life. It yearns to discover the societal and familial causes that created this unnecessary tragedy.

I don't want to give too much away, so I'll keep this brief. The movie evolves into a fascinatingly complex think piece that is better to witness than to hear second-hand. Yes, it's a study of grief, but it's also a satirical thesis on the pointlessness of war. It's an analysis of how an individual's flaws echo through generations. It points a finger at the "shoot first, ask questions later" policies of the police. It questions the religious traditions that hold together the fabric of society.

All of these themes are studied in the context of the foxtrot - a dance that always ends in the same place that it began. The film comes to the beautifully depressing conclusion that none of these problems can be solved. Or at least that none of these problems have been solved, despite multiple generations living through them. No matter what we do, we always end up in the same place.

In my opinion this movie is really an art masterpiece. The cinematography and the mise-and-scène are both stunning and contribute perfectly to the development of the story and the message behind it. The images shown are absolutely beautiful and the acting is subtle, but convincing. This movie is funny, yet moving and it really makes you think. There are some surprising turns but it's great how all the elements in it seem to make sense once the film is over.