My First War

In 2006, Yariv Mozer, like so many other reservists in the Israeli army, was summoned to fight in an abruptly flaring war with Lebanon. On an impulse, Mozer, who owns a film production company, took along his camera. is the reflection of his experiences on the front and the conversations he had there with his fellow conscripts and superiors. Mozer not only brought his camera to capture the war, but also to keep it at a distance. It is a recurrent theme in film: Lieutenant Colonel Ilan Levy is compared to Sean Penn, Private Idan Taler refers to Spielberg's to convey his experiences, and to Mozer himself the first weeks of war feel like a video game, with two sides shooting at each other from a distance. This changes when the troops actually invade Lebanon and the atmosphere grows tenser. Although the war was started to retrieve two captured Israeli soldiers, the disillusioned privates chiefly express their distrust of the army commanders. The film is in the first person, with a voice-over by Mozer, but at the same time speaks for and on behalf of all the soldiers who were there whose stories were ignored in Israel after the war.