91
This sobering movie is a triumph, but it’s also just a hugely compelling story about how power tries to silence all other narratives.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
90
The film works on two levels: one is about the massacre; the other is about the psychology employed not only by perpetrators, but by the powerful forces that back them up.
90
The New York Times by Ben Kenigsberg
The emerging film is not simply a persuasive augmentation of Katz’s argument, but also a disturbing portrait of how very human impulses — passivity, rationalization, social pressures — can shape the writing of history.
80
Los Angeles Times by Carlos Aguilar
Though Schwarz’s finished film provides unmissable and infuriating insight, it’s also disappointing that he never mentions the ongoing violence that the Israeli state commits against residents in the current Palestinian territories, including numerous documented human rights violations.
91
Aesthetically and dramatically, Tantura is a fairly straightforward piece of work, and this is appreciated. We are being presented with the facts as the filmmakers see them. Schwarz and his collaborators acknowledge Katz and the complications of his word, while also letting us hear the admissions from the soldiers themselves.
70
Screen Daily by Jonathan Romney
Tantura makes for a fascinating, troubling watch, although it doesn’t altogether come across as rigorously objective, given rhetorical touches in both music (ominous ambient drones, ironically boisterous kibbutz songs) and visuals (thriller-style close-ups of Katz’s cassettes playing, a pointed insert of a see-no-evil monkey statuette).
80
The Hollywood Reporter by Jordan Mintzer
Tantura finally attempts to get the record on that incident straight, but as a movie, it serves an even greater purpose by bringing it to a wider public than ever before.
80
Los Angeles Times by Justin Chang
The result is both a study in historical amnesia and a kind of epistemological detective story, in which the grim truth is as hard to refute as it is hard to prove.
90
The film is a record of what went on during the War of Independence — a much uglier and more brutal story than Israel has ever wanted to acknowledge. The film includes graphic testimony, and it comes from the most authoritative sources possible: those who fought in the war and lived it — the Palestinians, but also the Israeli soldiers themselves.
70
Schwarz piles on more than enough damning interview footage to support his and Katz’s case, making Tantura a better-than-average work of docu-agitprop.