2012 Directed by Dror Moreh
In an unprecedented and candid series of interviews, six former heads of the Shin Bet — Israel's intelligence and security agency — speak about their role in Israel's decades-long counterterrorism campaign, discussing their controversial methods and whether the ends ultimately justify the means. (TIFF)
看门人, Töte zuerst!
I can't stop crying.
Though already long-diseased, my country finally died on November 4, 1995, and I don't think it's ever coming back.
Some may claim that beyond polished aesthetics and After Effects acrobatics, there isn't much in virtuosic cinematic expression to this doc, but this is something beyond cinema. This is a piercing cry for an end to the slow suicide of a society; it just uses the platform of cinema.
EVERYONE should watch this. Everyone.
Definitely one of the best documentaries I've seen. Relevant, poignant, riveting, and expertly-crafted. Not one to miss. I can't remember exactly what won the Oscar, but it probably should have been this.
(7/8 is "Very Good")
The Gatekeepers approaches the government-insider-documentary format (if it can be called a format) in the same way The Fog of War does - namely to try and focus the wisdom of its subjects into select lessons.
It's an approach that works extremely well, because no group is more capable of encapsulating Israeli defense than its defense heads.
The second thing it does extremely well is to give a balanced view in the face of the ongoing Israeli-Palestine conflict. These individuals' jobs are to defend Israel - that means killing Arab terrorists principally, but also innocent Arab civilians in the crossfire. The filmmaker probes the morality of their actions justly - both from a larger perspective of human rights and a smaller perspective of domestic security.
And the juggling of those two forces makes for an extremely interesting film.
42/100
Six former heads of Israel's counter-terrorism unit talk candidly (in separate interviews) about their profession, accompanied by archival footage. All very interesting, but only perhaps 6% more interesting than the transcript would be. I really just have no tolerance for conventional expository docs anymore.
In Newcastle-Upon-Tyne there is a cinema called the Tyneside cinema, I hadn't been there for 3 years, but on my recent trip back I thought I would go check it out again as it is essentially my favourite cinema in the country. I had to be pretty specific with the times of the films so I wouldn't miss my train home, and the only film I could make is The Gatekeepers. On the one hand I realise that the film was Oscar nominated an has been garnering great reviews, on the other, did I really want to see a film about Israeli foreign policy from an Israeli standpoint? In the end I figured seeing it would be better than simply…
“We wanted security and got more terrorism.”
“When you retire, you become a bit of a leftist.”
Like The Fog of War and CitizenFour, I’m glad there are people out there collecting this kind of information and getting people like this to talk, but I don’t personally know what to do with the information. On top of that, as with PS Jerusalem, I don’t really understand the whole Israel thing enough to follow the finer points (I know, I’m terrible: but at some point a few years ago, after Nick Clegg, I opted for sanity over total political savvy) - so I end up watching it vaguely like, “okay, war is hell, politicians are stupid, terrorism is complicated… what’s new?”…
Essential viewing that offers some depressing (and at times terrifying) firsthand accounts of the activities of the Shin Bet and the motivations behind the group's moves since the Six-Day War, surprising us with an impressive combination of interviews, archival footage and CGI.
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Great interviews with heads of Shin Bet and lots of archival footage. The doc itself is perhaps a little overlong in places.
This came out in 2012 and things uhhh have not gotten better since then.
The subject this week on the 2020 Documentary Challenge was supposed to be the Oscar-nominated SHORT documentaries but I somehow missed that and watched a feature. Oops. Anyways, because of that, today I watched "The Gatekeepers" was nominated back in 2013 (and has been on my watchlist ever since).
I honestly cannot say I like „The Gatekeepers”, although that should be obvious, I guess, I do not think anyone watches a documentary like that for their own enjoyment. It is a truly hard film to get through, showing the a very brutal and terrifying reality we often prefer not to think about. The former heads of Israel’s Shin Bet talk about their… well, job. I was quite surprised by their…
part of my 2020 Documentary Challenge
Week 5: Region: Middle-East
Important and troubling documentary that shines a light on that is normally kept secret. Very strong, but somehow didn't manage to keep my attention as much as some of the other documentaries I have watched the past couple of weeks.
The Gatekeepers is a gripping documentary about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with interviews from the former heads of Shin Bet — no small feat to have them talk candidly about security details, ordered hits, and their insights. Shrewd but level-headed individuals.
Yeah, so ok the truth ain't pretty, but there it is. Shin Bet is Isreal's hidden hand. When diplomacy doesn't work and outright war doesn't work, what else do you have? All nations do this to some extent and if done right, it actually saves lives. If done poorly it can make everything worse. This film makes it clear that these decisions in Isreal are not being conducted in a vacuum. Thought is going into most of these calls. Who get's to live with them is another matter.
I learned a lot. Had me question my own beliefs and morality.
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