This film was released on Friday 16th October 2015 and is no longer screening. 

The voices the title refers to are those of Israeli soldiers, who made clandestine recordings of their experiences in the aftermath of the 1967 Six Day War, an action that resulted in substantial territorial gains for Israel. The ambivalent sentiments expressed in these tapes, however, didn’t quite chime with the government’s nationalistic agenda, and it is alleged that just 30% of the recordings were made public. Director Mor Loushy’s film positions itself as a corrective to this act of censorship – as one participating soldier says, “we may not serve the national morale, but we may do a small service to truth.”

Regretful and disillusioned, the soldiers’ testimonials reveals an empathy with Arab refugees who are displaced by their conquering manoeuvres, as their own parents were not so long ago during WWII. Loushy’s strategy of showing the former soldiers in the present day, listening silently to their own voices, proves subtle and affecting. Notes by David O’Mahony.

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