LEBANON

The First Lebanon War, June, 1982. A lone tank and a platoon of paratroopers are dispatched to search a hostile town that has been bombarded by the Israeli Air Force. The mission gets out of control and turns into a death trap. Night falls and the wounded troops remain trapped in the center of a town in ruins, unable to communicate with the central command and surrounded by Syrian commandos closing in on all sides. The film's heroes are the tank crew: Shmulik the gunner, Assi the commander, Herzl the loader and Yigal the driver, four 20 year old boys, operating a killing machine. They are not courageous war heroes, eager for battle or self-sacrifice. All they have is a terrible fear of death. They find themselves losing their way amid the chaos of war. Shmulik, the gunner, is the last link in the chain of death. He is the one who sees the target through the cross-hairs, pulls the trigger and kills. He has to make horrendous split second decisions under massive pressure. But he's not cut out for it and his failure to function exposes his comrades to death that lurks everywhere. Lebanon is based on a true story about survival in the face of a palpable threat of death, a situation in which the conflict between basic instincts and human conscience claims its victims.