Foxtrot is the Winner of National Board of Review Best Foreign Film; the Silver Lion in Venice; and the Ophir Award for Best Picture, Director & Actor. Foxtrot is the Israeli Submission for the 2018 Academy Awards.In the film, Michael, and Dafna experience gut-wrenching grief when army officials show up at their home to announce the death of their son Jonathan. Michael becomes increasingly frustrated by overzealous mourning relatives and well-meaning army bureaucrats. While his sedated wife rests, Michael spirals into a whirlwind of anger only to experience one of life’s unfathomable twists — a twist that can only be rivaled by the surreal military experiences of his son.
On the red carpet for the 2018 National Board of Review Gala at Cipriani 42nd Street this week, director Samuel Maoz shared his inspiration for Foxtrot:
My first feature film Lebanon was about my personal trauma as a soldier in the first Lebanon War, but when the film won the Golden Lion in Venice and went out and made a big noise, so suddenly I discovered that I’m not alone, that there are many men like me in Israel, post-traumatic men who don’t have nightmares, who are not lonely, who can function, but still, deep inside the soul is bleeding. And then when I made Foxtrot, it’s a film about the post-trauma, I added an additional layer. My main challenge was to tell a personal story that will reflect the collective … From the personal point-of-view, it’s intense for men with this fate. The film tries to correct this very concept of what we call fate with a story about father and son. They are far away from each other, but despite the distance and the total separation between them, they change each other’s fate and of course their fates, but from a wider perspective, I can say that it’s a film that deals with the bleeding wound of Israeli society, with traumatic circle that we are trapped in, the foxtrot.
Foxtrot Opens in the US on March 2, 2018.