Defamation

Defamation Yoav Shamir
Israel/Denmark/USA/Austria, 2009, 93’ mins.

WEBSITE
www.defamation-thefilm.com

AWARDS and FESTIVALS
Special Mention, Tribeca Film Festival, 2009
Best Research Award, Doc Aviv Film Festival, 2009
The Stanley Kubrick Award for Bold and Innovative Filmmaking - Taverse City Film Festival, 2009

PRESS QUOTE
“An incredibly bold and brave film.” ~ Michael Moore, film director

“The end result is at once intelligent, wry and – there is no way around it – quintessentially Jewish, in the best sense.” ~ Leslie Felperin, Variety

SYNOPSIS
What is anti-Semitism?, Defamation asks. That's what Shamir started to ask himself 5 years ago, when his documentary Checkpoint, which questioned Israel’s state policy towards Palestinians, was accused of being "anti-Semitic" by a journalist. That's when he started to notice the importance the issue had in his country's daily life, where, as he points here, there is no day the media doesn't publish an article about Nazism, the Holocaust or anti-Semitism itself. With a sense of humour and irony, Shamir looks for the skilful politic operator that is the director of the Anti-Defamation League – an NGO with a millionaire budget that collects and analyzes anti-Semitic evidence – and writers like American Norman Finkelstein, author of The Holocaust Industry, or John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt (The Israeli Lobby). Along the way, he encounters some especially brilliant moments, like when he goes in a trip to Auschwitz along with a group of students: as the kids watch images of the famine at concentration camps on the bus TV, they can't stop eating the candy and junk food they have in their own bags.