THE “WORLD’S” OPINION – NOT TO BE MISSED
Dani Rosenberg’s second feature film, after a crazy first attempt around the death of his father (The Death of cinema and of my father too, 2021), reconnects with the vigor of young Israeli cinema, a way of converting rage into movement. In fact, this new film is first and foremost nothing other than the story of a race, launched on the heels of a character rushing headlong into clandestinity.
It all began in a state of siege, in a broken building in Beit Hanoun, in the Gaza Strip, where a battalion of the Israeli army was sheltering. When evacuating the place, Shlomi (Ido Tako), an 18-year-old soldier doing his military service, suddenly decides to stay behind, letting the troop advance without him. By taking a side step, he leaves his role as a fighter, as well as the warlike logic and the political narrative that governs the clashes. His inaugural gesture is thus to defect from everything, including the war film which was beginning before our eyes.
Shlomi, running wild, takes a much less predictable line of flight. A run takes him out of the territory of Gaza to Tel Aviv, with long shots of panting and clashing tracking shots, to the rhythm of a freestyle drum game. There, it is obviously everyday life, that before conscription, which attracts him: he first seeks to see his loved ones again, his parents, especially his girlfriend, Shiri (Mika Reiss), imminently leaving for Canada and who he would like to convince to stay.
But in a city under tension, where soldiers patrol every street corner, Shlomi is always forced to move under cover, to evade, to skim the walls, to bounce back. Regarding his defection, he sees a scenario emerging around him that escapes him: his absence is immediately interpreted as a terrorist act of kidnapping, a hostage-taking by the enemy. Which does not fail to justify a bloody response in his name.
Existential position
Disclosed in August 2023 at the Locarno Festival, The deserter found himself hit hard by the news as he continued his festival tour, synchronous with the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas on the southern district of Israel, precisely where the story establishes its starting point . Invested, despite itself, with a prophetic character, the film nevertheless draws its inspiration from events that occurred well beforehand, in 2006: the “Summer Rains” operation launched to recover a soldier captured by a Palestinian commando.
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