Samuel Maoz Samuel Maoz, who trained as a cameraman and worked in art direction for both film and television in Israel, was wounded as a 20-year-old soldier during the 1982 Summer War with Lebanon. 25 years later he began a process of confronting his personal feelings and experiences for his first feature film, Lebanon. His colleagues Joseph Cedar and Ari Folman were already on their way to making their own war films, Beaufort and Waltz With Bashir respectively. Lebanon describes the traumatic experiences of a four-man Israeli tank crew in a Lebanese village early in the war.

After Lebanon had been rejected by both the Berlin and Cannes film festivals, Maoz picked up a Golden Lion at last year's Venice Film Festival. The film was nominated in ten categories for the Ophir, Israel's national film awards.

Lebanon is the first feature for Maoz, who carved out a reputation as a documentarian in Israel. Here Maoz is interviewed by Carlos Valdivia, a media assistant at the Levantine Cultural Center in Los Angeles.

 What has it been like to receive so much attention for your first feature film project?

It was weird. When I made Lebanon, I didn't dream about the Golden Lion and all this success. I just thought about my small country. As you know, this was is my true personal story. It was about my need to find some [closure]. When you kill someone, you feel responsible...

There is a huge difference between understanding you didn't have a choice and feeling guilty and responsible. I didn't speak [about this] for 25 years. They used to call us the Lebanon generation. Many of our parents, our teachers, came from Europe, many from German camps. I remember my teacher with a number on her arm, shouting that we must fight for our country; we must kill for it, and die for it-because everyone wants to eliminate us. So maybe she had good reasons to think like that. But we kids who grew up and lived in Israel, we didn't think that everyone wanted to terminate us. We just talked about the Tel Aviv beach and girls. So in a way, we were brainwashed. To come back from the war in the beginning of the ‘80s with your two hands, two legs, ten fingers, without burn marks on your skin and to start to complain that you feel frightened, it was almost unforgivable [sic]. They used to tell us to be thankful that we were alive.

In the end, my trigger was the second Lebanon war in 2006. Suddenly, I felt that I had remained silent for 25 years and now our kids are dealing with Lebanon again. I have a good friend who lost his only son there. Like everything in life, when it's regarding you, you skip it. And when it's touching your children, it's totally something else. And in that time, I felt that I had to find a way to create an affective feeling, not a politically correct feeling, something that can save lives here and there. So I didn't expect the success. But of course, I'm very happy for it.

Italian poster for "Lebanon"What gave you the idea to have almost the entire film take place in a tank?

From the beginning, I tried to find a way to create an affective feeling. I needed to have a very basic plot, something you can tell from eight to ten lines. Even the events that really happened were for me the symptoms, not the issue itself. The issue was what is going on in the soldier's soul during the war. I asked myself, how can I tell this story? Then I realized the only way to explain this war was not through the head, but more through the stomach, through the heart. To achieve this emotional understanding, you need to create a very strong experience. This is the only way to do it. I will put you in the tank. You will identify with the characters, see what they see, only know what they know. My idea was to have the audience be there, to feel it, to sit on the gunner's chair, to see the cross right in front of your eyes, see the victim, looking straight at your eyes. This was the only way for me to explain it. In this case, feeling is understanding. I want to bring the truth, and my truth was from inside the tank. If I was outside the tank, I would have needed to deal with fiction and I wanted to put the truth in front the audience. If I tell my truth, that's way they will feel it.

In the last few years, other acclaimed Israeli films like Beaufort and Waltz with Bashir have also dealt with the Southern Lebanon conflict. Would you consider your film a part of a growing anti-war sentiment?

Of course. Lebanon is a pure anti-war film because this is not even a political film. It is a humanistic film. I consider my feelings to be anti-war.

What has the reaction to your film been in Israel?

Israel is a very complex place. The reaction has been much more positive than negative. When we analyzed the reactions, we learned that with older audiences, like my parents, the reactions were a bit negative. Not negative in a way that this a bad film or that it is not true. They felt that this is not the time to show a film like this in Israel. But the young generation in Israel, a totally global generation, their reaction was totally positive. In the end, Israel is searching for a reason to celebrate. This is a film that won an important prize, so the country doesn't care if it's a war film or romantic comedy. We love it. Generally, it has been very positive. They even talk with me now about showing it to high school students before they go to the army. This is a really an achievement, it's breaking through some sort of taboo.

There has been a recent wave of young people refusing to enlist in the Israeli Defense Forces, including Omer Goldman, the daughter of a former head deputy of Mossad. Do you think your film has had a part in influencing this movement?

I really don't find the connection, to tell you the truth. Many young people just told me that they want to know the truth because they want to be with truth. But I don't find the connection with people who don't want to go to the army.

Israeli films, for the most part, don't screen in Arab countries. Has there been any Arab reaction to your film?

Yes, I will tell you an interesting story. About two months ago, a professor from a university in Beirut sent me an email and asked for a DVD for an underground screening and I sent him a DVD with an Arabic translation. After two weeks, he sent me an email telling me he did an underground screening on a big plasma screen and he invited 40 people from the cinema industry and the university. Every one of them wrote me two to three lines about what they felt. It was the most exciting email I ever got because it's people catching the humanistic feeling about Lebanon, not the political feeling.

Around the same time your film won the Golden Lion in Venice, there was a protest against the screening Israeli cinema in the Toronto Film Festival. Do you remember that?

We spoiled the party with Lebanon! (laughs). I don't agree with a movement that wants to shut people out. If you want to achieve something, the first step is to speak about it. And in the end, the Israeli directors are not from the right side of the political map.

As a former Israeli soldier, and someone who has made a film about conflicts in the Middle East, what are your views on the current status of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

I'm not a politician and not even a (laughs) government messenger or speaker. I am just an artist that's trying to bring peace in my way. From my point of view, we must do everything to save blood and everything that is needed to bring peace, except killing, of course.

What do you want audiences to take away from your film?

I just hope that the film will open peoples' minds and maybe they will ask themselves, "Who do we think are? Who have we become? And who can we never be again?"

What's next for you? Are you working on any new feature films?

I have started. Yeah, I feel that I am now ready for a good comedy (laughs)!

—Carlos Valdivia