White Soldier

All-white soldiers walk through a sun-drenched landscape. These grown men seem to have done this before – the routine way they move along gradually diminishes the association with "playing soldiers." The soundtrack of combat situations seems to be a memory of a time when it was for real. The outfit is a fashion-designer version of the current Israeli army uniform. The men – even their disheveled beards are painted white – are walking through occupied territory. After the patrol of abandoned terrain, they enter two villages to check the citizens' papers and look in their trunks. Almost everyone is so subservient that they obey, and this is just the beginning – humor and deadly seriousness clash time and again. We follow this performance by Yuda Braun, an army veteran and artist who has patrolled Israel and the occupied territories as the white soldier for many years. Now, he travels with his friend Matan Goldberg; they order Arabic coffee and share memories. Like the time when Braun was a soldier and he shot someone during a firefight. Stunned, he called his parents, and they were proud. That Friday, they reported in the synagogue that their son had shot a 'terrorist'. "I couldn't deal with that." And so now, he and Goldberg deal with their military pasts and their current status as civilians in a militarized society.