Winner, Jury Grand Prize for Director, Samuel Moaz, 2010
Winner, Best Screenplay, Samuel Moaz, 2010
The First Lebanon War, June, 1982. A lone tank and a paratroopers platoon are dispatched to search a hostile town that has already been bombarded by the Israel Air Force.
It’s a quick and easy job, maybe three hours at most. But matters start to get complicated.
This apparently simple mission gets out of control and turns into a death trap, a shivering nightmare. The film’s heroes are the tank crew: Shmuelik the gunner, Assi the commander, Herzl the loader and Yigal the driver – four boys aged 20 who are operating a killing machine. They are not fighters, eager for battle or self-sacrifice. Motivated by fear and the basic instinct of survival, they find themselves in a situation they cannot contain, coping with impossible conflicts and desperately trying not to lose their way amid the chaos of war. Lebanon is a personal film, a film about four boys who had never been involved in anything violent before and found themselves killing people, A film about survival against a palpable threat of death, a situation in which the conflict between their basic instincts and human conscious claims its victims.
The Asia Pacific Screen Academy expresses its respect for and acknowledgement of the South East Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. We pay our respects to the Traditional Owners of country, including the custodial communities on whose land works are created and celebrated by the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. We acknowledge the continuing connection to land, waters and communities. We also pay our respects to Elders, past and emerging. We recognise the integral role Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and First Nations peoples continue to play in storytelling and celebration spaces.
