American Cinematographer - April 2010 - 20

Production Slate
A soldier peers into a tank in Lebanon, the recipient of the Golden Frog at the 2009 Plus Camerimage International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography. Directed by Samuel Maoz and shot by Giora Bejach, the film is set entirely inside the tank. Sony Pictures Classics will release the film in the U.S. later this year.

Sitting in a hotel room in Lodz, Poland, cinematographer Giora Bejach recalls how director Samuel Maoz prepared his actors in Israel before starting production on Lebanon. “He put them inside a shipping container and closed the doors. Inside it was something like 45°C [113°F]. They didn’t know how long they would be in there. It was dark; they couldn’t see anything. They had no water, nothing, for one hour. Then, in the last five minutes, Samuel started to throw sticks and stones at the container. You know, that makes a hell of a lot of noise!” Bejach laughs. “When he let them out, they were ready for their close-ups! But it was amazing to see their faces.” Lebanon, which takes place entirely inside a tank during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, won the prestigious Golden Frog at the 2009 Plus Camerimage International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography. The film’s main characters are the four young men who make up the tank crew, none of whom has ever experienced combat. The film is limited to their point of view; the outside world is seen only through the binocular viewfinder operated by the gunner, Shmulik (Yoav Donat). Over the course of their first 24 hours in Lebanon, these callow recruits are transformed by the violence they witness and partake in, and by their memorable encounters with enemy combatants and innocent civilians. Lebanon is a war film without any heroes. It depicts a conflict
20 April 2010

American Cinematographer

Lebanon photos by Itel Zion, courtesy of Giora Bejach. Movie stills courtesy of CTV International.

Camerimage’s Golden Lebanon By Benjamin B

full of confusion, punctuated by sudden acts of violence. To illustrate the impact of combat, the tone of the film shifts from brutal realism to a moment of surreal madness, and finally, when the young men have lost all innocence, the film concludes with a simple act of humanity. Maoz, who met with AC in Paris after Camerimage, reveals that the film is based on his own experiences as a tank gunner, events that have haunted him for more than 20 years. He does not mince words: “I can say that the acts the war forced me to do ruined my life.” He says he had a “need” to tell his story, but that “it was a matter of how to tell it. The story in my film is not the plot. The plot is something very basic. Let’s say the events are the symptoms, not the issue. The issue is the bleeding soul, what happens inside a soldier during a war. I couldn’t tell this kind of story in a classic cinematic structure. How the hell can you tell a story about what’s happening inside a soul? It’s an emotional understanding, something you can understand through the stomach, through the heart. To achieve such an understanding, you must create a very strong experience.” Maoz’s goal was to confine viewers in the tank with the characters, and make them partake in the confusion and cabin fever of four young men experiencing the horror of war for the first time. “You see only what they see,” he notes. “You know only what they know.” Bejach credits his director for taking the actors and the audience “on an incredible journey.” He recalls that Maoz gave him a

American Cinematographer - April 2010

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