Tantura

Name: Tantura
Genre: Documentary
Released: December 2, 2022
Duration: 85 min
Rating: 81
Cast: Teddy Katz

2022

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Universal acclaim based on 12 Critic Reviews

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Movie Details & Credits

Reel Peak Films | Release Date: December 2, 2022 | Not Rated

Starring: Teddy Katz

Summary: The tape-recorded words “erase it” take on new weight in the context of history and war. When the State of Israel was established in 1948, war broke out and hundreds of Palestinian villages were depopulated in its aftermath. Israelis know this as the War of Independence. Palestinians call it “Al Nakba” (the Catastrophe). In the late 1990s,The tape-recorded words “erase it” take on new weight in the context of history and war. When the State of Israel was established in 1948, war broke out and hundreds of Palestinian villages were depopulated in its aftermath. Israelis know this as the War of Independence. Palestinians call it “Al Nakba” (the Catastrophe). In the late 1990s, graduate student Teddy Katz conducted research into a large-scale massacre that had allegedly occurred in the village of Tantura in 1948. His work later came under attack and his reputation was ruined, but 140 hours of audio testimonies remain. Director Alon Schwarz revisits former Israeli soldiers of the Alexandroni Brigade as well as Palestinian residents in an effort to re-examine what happened in Tantura and explore why the Nakba is taboo in Israeli society. The ex-soldiers, now in their 90s, recall unsettling acts of war while disquietly pausing at points they either don’t remember or won’t speak of. Audio from Katz’s 20-year-old interviews cuts through the silence of self-preservation and exposes the ways in which power, silencing, and protected narratives can sculpt history.… Expand

Director: Alon Schwarz

Genre(s): Documentary

Rating: Not Rated

Runtime: 85 min

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Critic Reviews

The Film Stage Dan Mecca

Nov 29, 2022

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. Read full review

The Playlist Ned Booth

Nov 29, 2022

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

Ben Kenigsberg

Dec 2, 2022

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. Read full review

Justin Chang

Nov 29, 2022

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. Read full review

Jordan Mintzer

Nov 29, 2022

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. Read full review

RogerEbert.com Matt Zoller Seitz

Dec 2, 2022

Israelis call the events of 1948 The War for Independence, while Palestinians call it Nabka, or The Catastrophe. It's hard to imagine how the two could be reconciled, and "Tantura" doesn't try. It has its hands full just trying to establish what happened, and encouraging participants and beneficiaries into accepting what it meant. Read full review

IndieWire Siddhant Adlakha

Dec 2, 2022

The film depends too greatly on its sense of academia to unearth its story, and it struggles to fully engage with the explosive topic at hand for its first hour. However, in the final stretch of its 85-minute runtime, this approach proves foundational for chilling revelations and quiet, cinematically self-evident questions about the way we remember history. Read full review

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