Origin: Israel France | Documentary | Director: Shlomi Elkabetz | 80 minutes

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Testimony (EDUT)

Israel/France, 2011, 80 minutes
Director: Shlomi Elkabetz

Official Selection - 68th Venice International Film Festival

With visual brilliance, testimonies of soldiers, officers and Palestinians are presented by some of Israel's top actors. A dozen unspoken stories from the lives of Palestinians and Israelis make up an Israeli collective conscience, presenting both sides of the same narrative.

Testimony is a provocative work of hybrid cinema in which Israeli actors perform a series of verbatim testimonies sourced from Palestinians subjected to Israeli atrocity, and from Israeli perpetrators. Delivered entirely in Hebrew, direct to camera, and against evocative empty landscapes, the effect is a deliberately disorienting vision of the collective experience of violence. Director Shlomi Elkabetz has described his intention "to turn the viewer into a witness. To turn the language of the occupier, my language, Hebrew, into his own nightmare." Denounced by the Israeli Minister of Culture for offering a "distorted view" of reality, Testimony is a bold, at times unsettling film that questions the nature of
bearing witness while subverting the familiar orders of nation and language, victim and perpetrator.

PRESENTED AS PART OF OTHER ISRAEL PEACE AND RECONCILIATION PROGRAM

Co-presented by B'Tselem USA

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGoW5_NdBFQ
https://www.imdb.com/video/vi4210204185?playlistId=tt2051984&ref_=tt_ov_vi

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View trailer