Karov La Bayit (Close to Home)

Not exactly what I did imagine, but it is a good movie about female teenagers soldiers that have to do their compulsory military service patrolling the streets of Jerusalem. A job none of them want to do and try to avoid stopping Palestinian passersby to ask them for their identity card, until close by a bomb explodes.

Definitively the girls do not look, nor behave like soldiers, they look and behave more like schoolgirls in their uniforms and yet, so much seems to depend from their jobs.

At the end the story seems more like a coming to age tale with an urban twist in a terrorist attack zone, but it is only a slice of life as the movie has no beginning nor an end, just tells how two 18 year old girls became friends.

As a movie has the feeling of a documentary and the main two actresses give a very credible performance.

Co written and co directed by Vardit Bily and Daila Hager the movie won the C.I.C.A.E. Award at the 2006 Berlinale for Forum of New Cinema.

Not for everyone as feels like art house cinema, but you have to like girls in uniform stories too.