New film ‘Kissufim’ brings a dose of war realities to light

The movie Kissufim, a Hebrew-language drama that opened around Israel on Thursday, begins as a new group of young people arrive at the kibbutz in Israel’s South to be there as part of their army service. 

Their idealism is balanced by their desire to have fun, and a lot of romances begin and fizzle, as they fit shifts working in the fields in between trips to the beach – in Gaza.

That’s right. In Gaza. That’s because the movie, the debut feature film of Keren Nechmad, which was made more than a year before the outbreak of the current war, is set in 1977, a time when Israel still occupied the Gaza Strip. 

The movie dramatizes this period of uneasy coexistence; that while the young volunteers want everything to be easy and joyful, the threat of terrorism is ever-present. 

Arik Einstein sang about it in “Drive slowly,” with the line, “And I think, we’re getting close to Gaza, and they better not throw a grenade,” just a few years before the movie is set. 

The tension creates a backdrop to the story of a summer that changes everyone in the group.

Kissufim, which Nechmad wrote with Hadar Arazi and Yonatan Bar Ilan, gracefully weaves the coming-of-age tropes with the reality of life in Israel during a time of hope – then-Egyptian president Anwar Sadat visited Jerusalem during the period when the film takes place, and the characters watch this momentous news event unfold on television.

But it’s important for Nechmad to talk not only about the historical background of the movie, but also the events of October 7 in the kibbutz, when Hamas terrorists killed 14 people. 

She added a title acknowledging this tragedy and dedicating the movie to the victims at the opening of the film.

“It was very important to include that because we shot on the kibbutz and they hosted us and gave us a place to create this story. Some of the people on the kibbutz were extras,” she said. 

The past mirrors the present 

“The story in the film mirrors what is happening today; it mirrors how it is to live on the edge of the country where there is always conflict. The country is still at war – and I haven’t forgotten.”

NECHMAD THINKS it’s important to remember that during the late 1970s, when Kissufim takes place, “Gaza was open, people went to the beach, they went to fix their cars there, they went to buy candy that wasn’t available in those days in Israel, and yet there was tension there.” 

She noted that the people who were living in the kibbutz on October 7 “engaged with the Gazans, took them to hospitals in Israel, tried to make peace with them, and then they got the worst out of [living there].”

She recalled that the first day the film crew arrived at the Kissufim, one of the residents “gave us a safety talk… He talked about what would happen if [a terrorist] comes into the kibbutz and what to do if there’s an alarm and I – we all – just started laughing; we said, ‘You’re just scaring us.’ I never imagined anything would happen. But the man who gave us that talk was one of those who died fighting for the kibbutz.”

Nechmad, 30, got the idea to make the movie by listening to her father’s stories about working as a volunteer at Kissufim in 1979, which seemed more relevant to her after she returned to Israel following her post-army period of studying filmmaking in New York.

 “I remember thinking, the loop is still happening. My father told me stories of his army service, and then I experienced it and then my sisters experienced it and I see it’s still happening.” 

She thought of her father’s stories and her own army experiences near the northern border and decided to set a story in Kissufim during the time of the Camp David Accords. 

“I thought that no matter where you put a story on a timeline of what’s going on in Israel, there’s always going to be a group of young people trying to live their lives, having love, lust, and trying to have a good time, and the Israeli reality shatters in their face – because you can’t just be here and have ‘the college experience,’” the film’s creator said. “There is always going to be war and tension and outside political influences that will transform how you think as a young adult.”

Bringing the realities of war to life

The film mixes scenes of typical young-people emotional and romantic problems with situations that illuminate the political and military conflict, and it helps that the movie stars some of Israel’s most appealing young actors, who help us get caught up in their love lives and dreams. 

These include Swell Ariel Or, best known for The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem, as well as Mili Eshet (Barren), Adam Gabay (Image of Victory), Yehonatan Vilozny (Spell Keepers, Full Speed), Lir Katz (The Malevolent Bride, Tatami), Erez Oved (Your Honor), and Tamir Ginsburg (Tehran).

THE STORY illustrates how even the characters’ romantic dilemmas are inextricably mixed with the larger national story. An example of this is that when Michaela (Eshet) chooses to have a fling with Eldar (Ginsburg), a macho soldier, Udi (Gabay) – who is in love with her – feels as if she is rejecting his pro-peace ideology as well as him.

In many Israeli films that deal with the military, male characters are the focus, but, Nechmad said, “I wanted to create strong female characters with their own wants.” Eli, who is played by Or, is the center of the film in many ways. 

A charismatic young woman who has suffered because of her brother’s PTSD from a previous war, Eli is based on a real person. “She’s a woman trying to find herself,” said the director.

It was also important for her to show the diversity of army experiences, with characters from all kinds of backgrounds being thrown together. 

She interviewed her father’s army comrades, as well as soldiers that she had served with, to create a plot that showcases Israeli diversity.

The actors lived together during shooting and Nechmad said it was easy to create the feeling that they were really a unit.

“They hung out together, they really got to know each other,” she said. She worked to provide them with support for the emotionally raw scenes, especially for those who had experienced trauma from their own real-life military service.

Promoting the film at film festivals in the US during the war has been complicated, Nechmad said, describing how she and Or were at a festival in Orlando and jumped when they heard backfire from a motorcycle, thinking for a moment it was an alarm.

While it may be challenging for Israelis to watch a film now about the beauty of life on a border kibbutz as well as the threats it faces, Nechmad feels that the film may help people process their emotions. 

“It was a hard decision to go forward with the release now,” she said. “It was supposed to come out just after October 7 and I was adamant that this wasn’t the right time. But I think in a way the story mirrors what happened and it can give you another perspective on the reality of Israel… The characters are trying to find themselves and people can always relate to that.”