2004
2004 was designated as an International Year of Rice by the United Nations, and the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and its Abolition (by UNESCO).
Events January
* January 3 – Flash Airlines Flight 6 ...
Israel
Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
.
Initially selected as the official entry from
Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...
for the foreign language film category at the 78th Academy Awards, ''Private'' was disqualified as its main spoken language is not in Italian (a rule that was changed, effective with the next year's Oscars, partly due to this film). The film has received the ''Golden Leopard'' (best film) award at the 57th
Locarno International Film Festival
The Locarno Film Festival is an annual film festival, held every August in Locarno, Switzerland. Founded in 1946, the festival screens films in various competitive and non-competitive sections, including feature-length narrative, documentary, sh ...
.
Plot
Mohammad, his wife and their five children live in a large, isolated house located halfway between a Palestinian village and an Israeli settlement. The house, in the crossfire of the two sides, is a strategic lookout point that the Israeli army decides to seize, confining the family to a few downstairs rooms in daytime and a single room at night. Mohammad refuses to leave this home and, reinforced by his principles against violence, decides to find a way to keep his family together in the house until the Israeli soldiers move on.
Main cast
*
Mohammad Bakri
Mohammad Bakri (born 1953; ar, محمد بكري, he, מוחמד בכרי) is a Palestinian actor and film director.Lior Miller – Commander Ofer
*
Hend Ayoub Hend may refer to
* Hend (name)
* Louis Forniquet Henderson (1853–1942), American botanist referred to as L.F.Hend.
* Hend Khaleh Rural District in Iran
* Hend Khaleh, a village in Iran
* Fariz Hend, a village in Iran
* Bid Hend, Isfahan, a vi ...
The Hollywood Reporter
''The Hollywood Reporter'' (''THR'') is an American digital and print magazine which focuses on the Cinema of the United States, Hollywood film industry, film, television, and entertainment industries. It was founded in 1930 as a daily trade pap ...
: "While the film is ultimately too limited in its scope to have much lingering impact, it does make for a thoughtful addition to the growing list of films dealing with the Israeli/Palestinian conflict"
*
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
: "An appropriately and deliberately gritty, drab-looking and edgy picture"
*
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
: "Midnight raid by Israeli soldiers turns the home of a Palestinian family into an occupied territory in Saverio Constanzo's politically loaded allegory"
*
New York Post
The ''New York Post'' (''NY Post'') is a conservative daily tabloid newspaper published in New York City. The ''Post'' also operates NYPost.com, the celebrity gossip site PageSix.com, and the entertainment site Decider.com.
It was established ...
: "The Palestinian characters are so thinly conceived that they might as well be named Victims One through Seven, and they're far more developed than the Israeli characters."
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New York Daily News
The New York ''Daily News'', officially titled the ''Daily News'', is an American newspaper based in Jersey City, NJ. It was founded in 1919 by Joseph Medill Patterson as the ''Illustrated Daily News''. It was the first U.S. daily printed in ta ...
: "Shot with digital cameras, "Private" has a gritty - sometimes grainy - documentary urgency that heightens the inherent tension, keeping viewers unsettled with the notion that a tragedy is always imminent."
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L.A. Weekly
''LA Weekly'' is a free weekly alternative newspaper in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 1978 by Jay Levin, who served as president and editor until 1991. Voice Media Group sold the paper in late 2017 to Semanal Media LLC, whose paren ...
: "The young Italian director Saverio Costanzo puts an unnervingly intimate twist on the costs of military occupation in this aptly claustrophobic drama."
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The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...
: "Saverio Costanzo’s Italian-made film adopts a stripped-down, naturalistic style to capture the tension as the squad leader proves equally fearsome to his men and the father’s angry children begin small acts of rebellion that threaten an uneasy equilibrium. Emotional and rational arguments fuel the occasionally heavy-handed script but the Israeli-Palestinian cast is strong in a film that shows how both sides are victims of violence."
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Empire
An empire is a "political unit" made up of several territories and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the empire (sometimes referred to as the metropole) ex ...
: "The script is occasionally heavy-handed in laying out motivation and meaning, but excellent performances from the Israeli-Palestinian cast and a chilling moral elevate this to more than 'issue film' status. " /ref>