On Thursday at 7:30 p.m. at the Kimmel Center, there will be a Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival screening of Samuel Maoz’s Foxtrot, winner of top Israeli film awards including best picture and the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival. The film, starring Lior Ashkenazi as a father who learns his Israeli soldier son has been killed in the line of duty, has been hotly debated in its home country due, among other things, to its depiction of a fictitious incident involving Israeli soldiers and Palestinian civilians, leading to a military cover-up. Foxtrot, financed by the government’s film fund, has been criticized by the conservative administration. Israeli culture minister Miri Regev condemned the movie, which nonetheless won several Ophir awards, the Israeli equivalent of the Academy Awards. The film is slated for a theatrical release in Philadelphia later this year.
The film will be followed by a panel discussion including film journalist Amir Bogen, Rider University media strategist Howard Joffe, Eran Polishuk of Israel’s Office for Cultural Affairs at the Consulate General of Israel, New York, and Bat El Trabelsi of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia.