Nizar Hassan

Seven years after completing an Israeli Defense Course for female combat soldiers, director Hen Lasker returns to take a deeper look at the place where she first fell in love with a woman. Over the course of 66 days and nights, Lasker shoots a fly-on-the-wall documentary that allows unprecedented intimacy into the lives of the trainees and commanders of the Israeli army. The dichotomy of the innocence of these baby-faced trainees with the heavy burden of military service is a central theme of the film, illustrated in a scene where they discuss losing their virginity while waiting their turn to fire a machine gun. But it is the director’s relationship with Smadar, a breathtaking commander struggling to mask her gentle soul with a strict military persona, which makes the film truly enchanting. The intersection of love, duty, and personal growth thrive through to the film’s surprisingly moving finish.

Directed by Nizar Hassan.

In Independence, Hassan makes his interviewees uncomfortable; but in Invasion, he makes his audience squirm in their seats as well. This isn’t accomplished through gory footage (although a close-up on a gunshot wound in a 77-year-old man’s hand certainly qualifies), but because of his interview with an Israeli soldier who bulldozed homes in Jenin. “We entered at night,” the soldier says, just as Hassan cuts to footage of young boys playing on the gate of a home in Jenin like a jungle gym.