Checkpoint

Israeli director Yoav Shamir captures the day-to-day indignities inflicted upon Palestinians in the occupied territories without frills or exaggeration in the extraordinarily simple but powerful (and sometimes grimly humorous) feature-length documentary Checkpoint. Featuring footage shot over a three-year period (from 2001 to 2003) at checkpoints situated throughout the region, the film shows soldiers and border police--some proudly cruel, but most bored and surly--treating men, women, and children with almost casual contempt as they attempt to travel from town to town on foot or in vehicles. Shamir's sympathies are hardly difficult to discern: though the Israelis occasionally come across as hapless conscripts (some even plead for the cameraman to depict them in a good light), they more often appear to be needlessly unpleasant, and when one of them--in a rare direct address to the audience--dismisses the Palestinians as animals, the similarity to Nazi propaganda about the Jews is a shock. Add to this the repeated sequences of Palestinians treated in a brutally dismissive fashion--families routinely separated, children sent on their way weeping, young girls harassed--and one can't help but be roused to indignation. Checkpoint contains no narration, or even titles apart from indications of locale, but they're not necessary--the stark matter-of-factness of the film makes it a searing indictment of the occupation and its dehumanizing effect on both sides. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)