Defamation

Hashmatsa

plays with Four Questions for a Rabbi

(Austria , Denmark , Israel , USA, 2008, 93 mins, 35mm)

PRODS: Philippa Kowarsky, Knut Ogris, Sandra Itkoff, Karoline Leth
SCR/CAM: Yoav Shamir
ED: Morten Hojbjerg
MUS: Mischa Krausz

I first had the idea to make a film about anti-Semitism when my earlier work Checkpoint was released. In one of that film's many reviews I was called... anti-Semitic. The author of that review was Jewish himself. At first I thought it was amusing. Being called an anti-Semite by an American-Jewish reporter seemed completely far-fetched. How could someone who chooses to live outside of Israel, who did not do military service like me, who did not lose a grandfather in the war like me, have the nerve to call me an anti-Semite?--Yoav Shamir

"Is anyone who expresses anti-Zionist opinions necessarily also anti-Semitic? Is anti-Semitism itself still an endemic and dangerous global problem? Has remembering the Holocaust become an unhealthy obsession, perhaps with a hidden agenda? Will readers regard a Jewish critic as a self-hating Jew just for considering Israeli helmer Yoav Shamir's personal, occasionally irreverent Defamation an ace slice of provocative, timely docu-making?... [Defamation is] at once intelligent, wry and--there's no way around it--quintessentially Jewish, in the best sense." --Leslie Felperin, Variety

"This will spark long arguments deep into the night among Jewish and non-Jewish viewers alike." --Andrew O'Hehir, Salon

Winner, Audience Award, Documenta Madrid 2009.

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