The Gatekeepers (Moreh, 2012) is streaming on DocPlay or a rental from AroVision
Back in September 2012 I paid my one – and so far only – visit to the famed Telluride Film Festival. It was an amazing experience and I wrote about it at some length in this series of travel posts.
On the final day of the festival I saw this incredible documentary that I was sure would become essential viewing around the world.
The argument that Israeli aggression towards its neighbours was the cause of its own security risks and political instability was being made – in detail – by its own intelligence leadership. I thought everyone would want to know this.
I was wrong.
The Gatekeepers is an incendiary documentary about the Israeli internal security service Shin Bet, featuring exclusive interviews with half a dozen forthright former directors of the organisation. Shin Bet is responsible for protecting the state of Israel from terrorist action from the occupied territories, the settlements and within its own official borders. Threats include the obvious (The PLO and Hezbollah) and the less obvious (demented orthodox rabbis trying to bring on the end of the world as we know it) and the details of some of the operations for and against Israel are both illuminating and horrifying.
These guys are professional security forces with years on the front lines, following orders from politicians who they have real difficulty respecting. The conclusions they – all – reach should have massive repercussions for Middle East policy and you can expect The Gatekeepers to be newsworthy up to an after the inevitable Academy Award nomination. It doesn’t advance the medium at all – pretty straight talking head and archive footage – but it’s extremely well done and the access and candour of the interviews is outstanding. This year’s The Fog of War, and arguably even more important.
The film did receive an Academy Award nomination but did not even get a short cinema release in New Zealand.
Was it intentionally suppressed? Or was it just not ‘box office’?
Anyway, the arguments are just as important today as they were then, maybe even more so.
The Gatekeepers is streaming in Australia and New Zealand on DocPlay, rentable in New Zealand from AroVision. It’s not available online at all in the U.K.
