Juliano Merr Movies

Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai directed this historical drama based on a true story of the conflict between Jewish refugees and Palestinians on the eve of the formation of the nation of Israel. On May 7, 1948, a freight ship, the Kedma, arrived on the coast of Palestine, carrying a load of Jewish refugees from Europe who had survived concentration camps in several nations. A few days later, the state of Israel would be created, but at the time, the passengers of the Kedma found themselves in the midst of a war, as they were greeted by British gunfire on one side, while on the other the Jewish underground army known as the Palmach stood by to defend them. The Palmach took many of the Kedma's refugees into hiding, while the rest were given weapons and asked to fight alongside the Palmach against the British and Palestinians. Over the next several days, the Palestinians and their British allies find themselves fighting with the Palmach soldiers and the Jewish refugees while interacting with one another as both sides realize how close and how far away they truly are. The cast includes Roman Hazanowski, Menachem Lang, Juliano Mer, Yussef Abu Warda, and Andrei Kashkar. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Filmmaker Amos Gitai was a first-hand witness to the 1973 Yom Kippur War, in which troops from Egypt and Syria chose one of the holiest days of the Jewish calendar to launch a surprise attack on Israel. This film examines the short but bloody conflict through the eyes of a student, Weinraub (Liron Levo). Weinraub and his friend Russo (Tomer Russo) have been instructed to join a special military unit on the Golan Heights shortly after the fighting begins, but in the confusion they are instead thrown in with an emergency medical team led by Dr. Klauzner (Uri Ran Klauzner). Weinraub and Ruso help Klauzner and his men rescue the wounded, and they find themselves in as much danger as the soldiers on the front line, as the fighting rages on around them and their helicopter is hit by enemy fire. Meanwhile, on the ground another doctor (Pini Mittleman) tries to preserve an oasis of calm and medical discipline in the midst of war. Kippur was shown in competition at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

This difficult-to-follow arthouse film explores the parallel stories of two very idealistic Zionist women who never met in real life. The story concerns the German poet Elsa Lasker-Schuller and the Russian Mania Schochat. Elsa (Lisa Krezer) lives in 1920's Berlin as Germany is degenerating into the chaos from which Hitler will emerge. Mania (Rivka Neumann) is living in Palestine, amid some of the first and most rigorous experiments in genuinely Marxist living, at a radical kibbutz. Each survives to be present at the beginning of the Jewish state, and each is sorely disillusioned. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide