Arquivo

The film is a kaleidoscope of images and associations from the distant Jewish past and the immediate Israeli present, sculpted from both collective and personal memories. Using Jeanne Moreau’s voice as a kind of chorus – she recites texts and poems in voice-over –, Gitai visits an Israeli army encampment, where he laments the “half-truths and half lies” on television and the “endless war” that his son is now engaged in fighting. As a counterpoint to these ancient and modern wars, he introduces memories of his mother through letters, sounds and anecdotes, a mother who spent much of the sixties in London.