Tantura
94 minutes
Alon Schwarz
Documentary
2022 - Palestine, Israel
Canadian Premiere
Arabic, Hebrew, with English Subtitles
Palestinians have long shared their testimonies about the 1948 massacre in Tantura – a once picturesque coastal fishing village near Haifa, cleansed during the Nakba and now its remains are under a parking lot. Alon Schwarz’s documentary exposes the extensive efforts taken to cover up the massacre and obfuscate Israel’s crimes. In the late 1990s, then graduate student Teddy Katz collected 140 hours of testimonies from both Israeli soldiers from the Alexandroni Brigade and residents of Tantura for his thesis documenting the massacre. After his thesis was published, Katz was attacked and his academic career ruined. Nearly 30 years later, Schwarz, with the guidance of Katz, tracks down the surviving Israeli soldiers from Katz’s tapes to gather their reflections about their actions in Tantura during the Nakba. The soldiers oscillate between raw memories, detachment and rhetoric, reflecting Israeli attitudes of the past and present ranging from denial of the Nakba to the ends justifying the means.
Awards and Selection
Sundance Film Festival 2022
HOT DOCS CANADIAN INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL 2022
