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Tantura(טנטורה)

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Israel · 2022
1h 25m
Director Alon Schwarz
Starring
Genre Documentary

When Israeli graduate student Teddy Katz documented a 1948 massacre of Palestinians, he was first celebrated for his groundbreaking work, then later shamed as a fraudulent traitor. When new evidence emerges to corroborate the initial findings, it raises profound questions about how to grapple with the darker chapters of history.

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What are people saying?

What are critics saying?

91

The Playlist by

This sobering movie is a triumph, but it’s also just a hugely compelling story about how power tries to silence all other narratives.

90

Vox by Alissa Wilkinson

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

The Film Stage by Dan Mecca

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

Variety by Owen Gleiberman

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

TheWrap by Simon Abrams

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.

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