Z32

The tone of is deceptively playful, but documentary veteran Avi Mograbi broaches some serious issues. A young soldier, once a member of an elite unit of the Israeli army, was involved in an act of retaliation that killed various Palestinian policemen. The man regrets what happened and wonders if he can be forgiven. In this self-proclaimed "musical-documentary-tragedy," Mograbi alternates between interviews with the soldier and his girlfriend and scenes in which the director himself offers singing commentary. Do I give the floor to a killer, he wonders, accompanied by a small orchestra in his living room. Meanwhile, Mograbi's wife doesn't like it one bit. The director experiments with different ways to make the soldier and his girlfriend unrecognizable, perhaps to illustrate that he, too, is looking for answers. "Do you think I'm a murderer?" the man asks his girlfriend. She doesn't know. Anyhow, their anonymity - Mograbi eventually settles on a computer-animated mask - lifts the question about guilt and absolution above this one individual: after all, couldn't anybody be behind that mask?