Checkpoint (2003 film)

Checkpoint (original title: Machssomim) is a 2003 documentary film by Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir, showing the everyday interaction between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian civilians at several of the regions Israel Defence Forces checkpoints. The film won five awards at various film festivals, including Best International Documentary at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, best feature-length documentary at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam and the Golden Gate Award for Documentary Feature at the San Francisco International Film Festival. Although the film was generally well received, it was also controversial and reactions from audience members and critics were sometimes very angry.^[1][2]

Synopsis

Checkpoint is shot in cinéma vérité style with no narration and very little context. Shamir himself is absent from the film except for one scene in which a border guard asks him to try to make him "look good," and Shamir asks how he should do that.

The camera films people trying to cross at various checkpoints. At some, such as the high-tech fortress like that at the Gaza Strip crossing there are hundreds of people crowded, waiting to get through. At others such as at South Jenin there is just a truck blocking the road while Palestinians trickle by. Interactions vary, ranging from mundane to mildly frustrating to maddening in their unfairness. Sometimes people show their identification cards without incident but much of what Shamir has chosen to include are the messier incidences. A school bus full of kids (averaging around eight years old) the viewer sees several times and passes at South Jenin quite regularly (the bus driver says everyday) is emptied and told that it cannot proceed. A family is separated because a border guard does not see the need for the father to accompany his family to the doctor because he is not sick. A woman sends her crying children back home on their own because their papers are not in order. Hundreds ignore soldiers at one place and walk through to town, many carrying nothing but groceries. On the way to Nablus an ambulance is stopped and each passenger is forced to explain what their need for treatment is. Sometimes the soldiers are obviously playing around with the people they are monitoring but often it seems that they are following arbitrary orders outside their control. The situation is only worsened by the fact that rarely does either party speak the same language: The entire film is spoken in patches of Arabic, Hebrew and English.

Awards

The film received five festival awards, including Best Feature Documentary at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, Best International Documentary at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival and the Golden Gate Award for Documentary Feature at the San Francisco International Film Festival.^[3]

References

1. ^ Tanzer, Joshua. "Film review CHECKPOINT (Machssomim) by Yoav Shamir." 2004. "[1]", November 18, 2009
2. ^ Guillen, Michael. "Interviews: HASHMATSA / DEFAMATION (2009): Interview With Yoav Shamir." 3 November 2009. "[2]", 18 November 2009
3. ^ "Yoav Shamir", Independent Television Service, 2005, retrieved 22 March 2010

External links

• Checkpoint at the Internet Movie Database