After the attack of 7 October, conducted by Hamas in the south of Israel, the conflict has continued to expand. The war has devastated the Gaza Strip over more than 10 months of Israeli reprisals, with a balance sheet that has already surpassed the 40,000 dead. The life of millions of Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank has been turned upside down. The conflict has radicalised part of the Israeli public opinion already strongly split before 7 October. Palestinian and Israeli extremists are acting to prevent peace and advance their supremacist battle. “Like horsemen of the apocalypse”, has written Pierre Haski in Le Nouvel Obs magazine, “they advance because they are allowed to do so and they are strong because the world is closing its eyes.”

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Dani Rosenberg (The Death of Cinema and My Father Too [+lee también:
crítica
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ficha de la película], in Cannes in 2020, The Vanishing Soldier [+lee también:
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ficha de la película], in competition in Locarno last year) has shot Of Dogs and Men [+lee también:
entrevista: Dani Rosenberg
ficha de la película] - presented in the Orizzonti section at the Venice Film Festival - over the months of October and November 2023 in the kibbutz along the border with Gaza, in the aftermath of the attack. A small crew, a light camera, no built set, dialogues mostly improvised. It is a fictional story but one interpreted by people from this place or present in the region at that moment. The only professional actress is the young Ori Avinoam. The film, which Rosenberg has written with Avinoam and Itai Tamir, follows 16-year-old Dar (Avinoam), who returns to her kibbutz of Nir Oz to look for her dog, Shula, lost in the terrorist attack of 7 October.

With music in her headphones, like any teenager, Dar traverses the horror that still hovers in this semi-destructed territory and meets the people there who, like her, have experienced the tragedy. To begin with, she meets a taxi driver, the perfect Bibi Netanyahu voter, who invokes bombing Palestinians with a nuclear bomb, like the Americans did with the Japanese to bring an end to the war in 1945. Along the streets of the deserted kibbutz, Dar crosses paths with the elderly Natan Bahat, the only one who hasn’t left. “I saw them that day, coming in like a swarm and looting everything.” Natan is talking about his Palestinian friend Jamal, who like him and so many others, only wants peace. “We are not Nazis, we can’t exterminate them”. In the devastated building that once was the kindergarten, they tell her that dozens of children are missing. In the moments without dialogue, we listen to an off-screen voice (that of actress Swell Ariel Or) who reads the diary of Dar’s mother, who disappeared the day of the attack, after having asked her daughter to lock herself in the safety room. 1987, 1993, back in time: life in the kibbutz, the decision to go study in Jerusalem and the desire to return to her village.

With the protagonist who scrolls Instagram, TikTok or Telegram, the director shows us a perception of the war from a young person’s eyes. A soldier advises Dar to look for Nora Lifshitz. When we meet her, we understand why the filmmaker has remained artistically attracted to this character: with green hair, barefoot, covered in tattoos and with piercings everywhere, Nora scours the territory back and forth with her off-road vehicle looking for dogs, cats and other domestic animals dispersed at the beginning of the conflict. Perhaps the idea of the disappearance of Dar’s dog emerged from the presence of this young woman, on a symbolic search for an Israel that has lost itself. In an animated sequence (which reminded us of Waltz with Bashir), Dar’s dog follows a little Palestinian boy who lets it into his house, while the bombs of an IDF attack are hissing. This is how Rosenberg closes the circle of infinite violence. Amos Gitai, in Venice with his own film, has said that films don’t give an answer, but make us all interrogate ourselves and not resign ourselves to divisions.

Of Dogs and Men is a co-production between Israel and Italy by Laila Films and Stemal Entertainment with Rai Cinema. Rai Cinema International Distribution handles international sales.