Unter Bomben

Not sure why this film isn't rated higher. Its really good. The other review does a good job explaining why its good. (an amazing achievement, part documentary, part drama, great acting, great story, great cinematography) I will add, it is not pro-hezbollah, its not pro-Israel, its anti-war. However it is told from the perspective of a Lebanese woman, so if you are really pro-Israel and pro-war and pro-killing people, you will probably not like it.

Really depressing. So if you want feel-good and redemption, don't go see it.

It has a great love story too. Its complicated and not trite at all.

This is a unique touching film

Enjoyable movie. Acting is solid. Mix of real life footage it was hard to tell what was staged and what was real. Really makes you wonder why civilised human societies still insist on bombing each other to the stone ages.

In our modern and enlightened age there is no such thing as a 'Non-Combatant'. Whether we like it or not, each of us is on one side or the other. UNDER THE BOMBS tells the story of a young mother who is trying to find her sister and son during the ceasefire of the 2006 Israeli/Lebanon Conflict. She is a wealthy outsider from Dubai who enlists the aid of a sympathetic local cabbie who helps her track down her missing family. The film focuses on their budding friendship against the backdrop of actual war zone footage. Many of the scenes are unscripted, and are shot as the real events unfold, and make for compelling cinema. The film drives home the message that wars are putatively fought and lost for valid reasons, but there are never any winners-only losers. A very thought provoking look at the true cost of a nation's foreign policies.

"You do not want war! I don't want war! All we want is to live! Is it too much to ask? " Lebanon has seen many wars since last half of century. 1948, 1958, 1968, 1975, 1982, 1984, 1989, 1996, 2006, 2007, 2011 till 2017. This film was shot during the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah (a Lebanese Shia Islamic Party). Israel launched a massive assault in response to killing of 2 Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah. It fired thousands of rockets targeting the residential areas of the southern Lebanon city that killed more than a thousand civilians. The attacks from both the sides went on for 33 days. This is a story about a Lebanese mother and her quest to find her son who was believed to have been rescued after the building he was in was bombed. This movie is not about script writing, cinematography, direction or even acting. It is distinctive and unparalleled in making of it. It was filmed in the war zone towards the tail end of the actual war when smoke was still rising from the debris of the buildings and the smell of gunpowder was still in air . Shot completely in Lebanon, it is raw, poignant and chilling. It was Lebanon's 2009 academy award submission .A good watch.

Under the Bombs (2007)

I can picture this being required viewing for anyone wanting a view of the kind of back and forth fighting between Israel and its many unfriendly neighbors. The devastation from superior Israeli firepower is horrifying. And you can see better the anger that ordinary Lebanese citizens--Muslim and Christian both--have toward the apparently insensitive Israelis.

The way this is unfolded is a convergence of two kinds of victims of the violence--a mother looking for her child and a taxi driver who she hires to take her around. In the searching we see all of Southern Lebanon's worst destruction--the real thing, shot on site--and we feel the frustration and hatred in all the people at the situation. We also see that it comes down to coping, as well, with a sense of resignation, that it's all out of their reach, even if the bombs reach them all too easily.

So, you'll cry and be in ruins yourself if you let yourself be absorbed. There is eventually going to be a sense that the movie plays the same chords for too long. The search keeps taking new turns, but the rubble, the anger, and sorry, the frustration, and even the relationship between the leads stays relatively the same. It's only in this last respect--a highly unlikely meeting of minds and hearts between to very different classes of people--that there is some evolution.

And the search, of course, has a kind of resolution that is sudden and a bit surprising. There are moments of movie drama along the way (the car stalls at the worst possible time, of course, and that kind of thing), but mostly it's about being transported to this very real war torn place using modern cinematography. The acting is intensely strong, and the basic story line heart wrenching.

Yes, see it, for those aspects that are overwhelming and necessary to understand as much as possible.