User reviews

Trespassing the boundary between documentary and fiction, the author invites people to experience Palestine- Israel conflict from a new angle. The film is delivering a series of testimonies given by Israeli soldiers and Palestinian civilians, acted out and thus animated by actors. Israeli actors, placed against empty and desaturated but still beautiful landscapes, give voice to the testimonies of both conflicting sides, speaking directly to the camera about horrors and atrocities that took place on these lands and became a daily reality, a routine for those people. It is very difficult to categorize this film – as was pointed out before it is neither fiction, nor documentary, nor does it have any generic characteristics or traditional narrative structure, as well as there is hardly anything cinematic about it. Testimony can be regarded as a trip down collective memory lane of victims and oppressors, sharing one experience and in a way united by it. All testimonies are in Hebrew which particularly gives a new perspective on Palestinian experience of the conflict. The author claims that this choice was dictated by intention to oblige Israelis "to listen again" to the stories that they think they heard enough. The sequence featuring an Arab-Israeli singer performing a song in Arabic concludes the film and contrasts the rest of it. Every line of the lyrics is closed with "to you", as if the singer addresses the spectator directly, inviting him to involve with every testimony witnessed. Testimony is not a political statement. Author does not accuse or support any side, nor does he try to balance them. Testimony is not an analysis of the conflict, it is an impression, a subjective point of view, director's poetic perspective on a world-known facts.