“Tantura” (2022), directed by Alon Schwarz, is a documentary film about the events which brought dramatic changes to the lives of villagers in Tantura in the course of the Arab-Israeli war in 1948. It scrutinizes the claim made by Israeli officers of the Alexandroni brigade of the massacre of Palestinians, a story engineered by the Israeli graduate student Teddy Katz in the nineties of the last century. Known for its 140 hours of recorded testimony, Katz’s research became like a cow on the hot spot when his opponents did win a law suit against him for defamation. However, the documentary therefore draws on Katz’s audio tapes to re-assess what took place, aimed at exposing the hush that befell this grim episode in what is Israeli affairs.
Still, the veterans, being almost ninety now, have contradicting statements that were made too about that. Some of them take one of the more rough alternatives and supplies upon it, other say while they don’t remember any particular event they don’t see the clear need in saying them. Besides that, the documentary addresses the straightforward fact that the most uncomfortable facts of history are the ones that have literally never been easy for any of the nations to accept, same as ‘Tantura’ which illustrates the gist behind issues that go beyond the ordinary twisting of the Israeli-Palestinian story.
The film was presented as part of the Sundance film festival at which it was praised for being rather sensitive to such difficult issues of history. It does provide a sometimes offensive commentary at how things were in regard to rememberence and the processes of forgetting all at the same sign.