Kippur (2000)

81% of critics liked it
(21 reviews)
54% of users liked it
(750 ratings)

Filmmaker Amos Gitai was a first-hand witness to the 1973 Yom Kippur War, in which troops from Egypt and Syria chose one of the holiest days of the Jewish calendar to launch a surprise attack on Israel. This film examines the short but bloody conflict through the eyes of a student, Weinraub (Liron… More Filmmaker Amos Gitai was a first-hand witness to the 1973 Yom Kippur War, in which troops from Egypt and Syria chose one of the holiest days of the Jewish calendar to launch a surprise attack on Israel. This film examines the short but bloody conflict through the eyes of a student, Weinraub (Liron Levo). Weinraub and his friend Russo (Tomer Russo) have been instructed to join a special military unit on the Golan Heights shortly after the fighting begins, but in the confusion they are instead thrown in with an emergency medical team led by Dr. Klauzner (Uri Ran Klauzner). Weinraub and Ruso help Klauzner and his men rescue the wounded, and they find themselves in as much danger as the soldiers on the front line, as the fighting rages on around them and their helicopter is hit by enemy fire. Meanwhile, on the ground another doctor (Pini Mittleman) tries to preserve an oasis of calm and medical discipline in the midst of war. Kippur was shown in competition at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Directed By: Amos Gitai
Written By: Amos Gitai, Marie-Josee Sanselme
Genres: Art House & International, Drama

In Theaters: Nov 3, 2000 Wide

Critic Reviews

Michael Rechtshaffen, Hollywood Reporter
A patience-trying docudrama almost completely devoid of any trace of narrative structure or even defined characters.
Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times
A classic war film, at once elegiac and immediate, that takes you smack into the chaos of combat yet is marked by a detached perspective.
Fred Camper, Chicago Reader
Gitai plunges the viewer into the reality of modern warfare, in which the enemy is often invisible -- we never see the Syrians in Kippur -- and battle lines are often unclear.
A.O. Scott, New York Times
The relentless attention to the sheer awfulness of war, which is the film's great strength, is also something of a shortcoming.
Jason Gorber, Film Scouts
A powerful film both intimate and epic, Kippur far exceeded my expectations. While I found his last film, Kadosh, to be overly melodramatic and drawn out, the mix of humour and horror in this film work well to create an extremely effective movie.
Jeffrey M. Anderson, Combustible Celluloid
A near-masterpiece.
Steve Tilley, Jam! Movies
As bloody or breathtaking or heroic as these gussied-up Hollywood depictions of armed human conflict might try to be, none of them capture the true hellacious chaos of war like Israeli director Amos Gitai's Kippur.
Ed Scheid, Boxoffice Magazine
Gitai's forceful direction realistically captures the chaos, dislocation and agony that the helicopter team witness and experience.
Dennis Schwartz, Ozus' World Movie Reviews
It's as good a war film as I have ever seen, and that includes the gritty hard-nosed Sam Fuller's autobiography "The Big Red One."
Mark Freeman, Critical Eye
all the more daring for its desire to convey its message without didacticism or even conventional methods of narrative.
Arthur Lazere, culturevulture.net
an uncompromising look at war... unglamorous, unromanticized, gritty and intimate
Bruce Kirkland, Jam! Movies
Throughout, and even in the end, we have no emotional involvement. We watch, shrug and walk away.

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Featured Audience Ratings

Randy T

Amos Gitai's fictional examination of the Yom Kippur War of 1973 is presented without pretense or embellishment. Like the conflict that inspired it, <i>Kippur</i> is muddy, bloody and disorienting. A fitting commentary on man's perpetual failure to coexist.
Dimitris S

Ignore the usual comments regards to the flow of the film.It's sheer film-making at it's most possible and at it's most believable.The Israeli Platoon,too much dreadfulness and a few comrades who do the job.Is that all?Gitai locates the gene of good/evil inside the… More
Ignore the usual comments regards to the flow of the film.It's sheer film-making at it's most possible and at it's most believable.The Israeli Platoon,too much dreadfulness and a few comrades who do the job.Is that all?Gitai locates the gene of good/evil inside the petrified eyes of his protagonists amidst trenches and bombings,where the opening and closing scene are the sole moments of self-relief and future hope.
MJS M

An Israeli film about the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Largely based on director Amos Gitai?s own experiences, it tell the story of a soldier placed in a chaotic environment, that?s about as much story as one will find here as this is a largely non-narrative film. Gitai often has long takes… More
An Israeli film about the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Largely based on director Amos Gitai?s own experiences, it tell the story of a soldier placed in a chaotic environment, that?s about as much story as one will find here as this is a largely non-narrative film. Gitai often has long takes with minimal camera movement and will often remain focused on seemingly mundane things in hope that if the camera lingers on them they will somehow mean something more. Some may find this filmmaking profound, I found it as boring as dishwater. There are a few farily interesting scenes, but as a whole this film is Thin Red Line Lite at its best, boring and pretentious at its worst.

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Kippur (2000)

Critic Reviews

Featured Audience Ratings

Randy T

Dimitris S

MJS M

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