It all started in 1987, Yitzhak Rabin, then Minister of Defense, asked Lanzmann, after having seen Shoah, to make a film about the War of Independence. Lanzmann refuses: “There are in fact two possible accounts of this war, the Israeli story and the Arab story. It is not possible to get into the reasons of both camps at the same time, except to make very bad movies.” In return, Lanzmann offers Rabin a film about “the reappropriation of force and violence by the Jews of Israel.” The Defense Minister accepts and replies to Lanzmann: “We don't have a shekel to offer you, but I am putting the army at your disposal, we will not hide anything from you, it will open its secrets to you.”
A major military adventure began for Lanzmann. At the age of 67, the director became a soldier, he boarded Phantom and F16 fighter planes supporting up to 7G. He drives Merkavas tanks, takes part in combined maneuvers in the middle of the desert, 48 hours without interruption...
Lanzmann then paints a portrait of an army like no other, he understands the singular courage of fate, not only of the survival of men, but that of an entire nation nourished by “the fear of annihilation”.
In his memoir, Lanzmann summed up this thought by quoting Salmen Lewental: “The truth, he wrote, is that you want to live at any cost, you want to live because you live, because the whole world lives. There is only life...” We understand with IDF, that young Israeli soldiers have “neither the bloodshed nor the privilege granted to life, which makes its preservation a founding principle and explains the specific military tactics unique to this army and no other.”
