Israeli director Dover Kosashvili adapts one of Israeli literature’s most celebrated novels – by author Yehoshua Kenaz – in this multi-character, multi-tonal look at a platoon of aspiring Israeli soldiers, set in 1956. Kosashvili doesn’t shy away from tackling Israel’s diverse, at times dizzying, racial, ethnic and class blend as he follows a boot camp comprised of conscripts from Ashkenazi Jews, new immigrants from North Africa and Europe, Holocaust survivors, as well as both secular and religious individuals. Set over ten years before the Israeli army’s epochal victory in the 1967 war, Infiltration offers a series of vignettes designed to show a smorgasbord of Israeli attitudes and mores and ultimately the challenges of creating a homogenous society from so many disparate pieces. Everything from Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket to Oliver Stone’s Platoon gets referenced in Kosashvili’s entertaining, thought-provoking tale. –BFI
Born in Soviet Georgia in 1966, Dover Koshashvili immigrated to Israel with his family in 1972. He has directed two feature films and a short. His short, Im Hukim (By the Laws), first earned him acclaim at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival, where it was considered for the Cinefoundation award.
In 2001, Koshashvili made his feature film directorial debut with Late Marriage, from a screenplay he wrote himself. The film was critically acclaimed in both the U.S. and abroad. Stephen Holden of The New York Times called the movie “…a powerful and very bitter comedy.” Danny Graydon of the BBC wrote that the film has “a lively script, an array of touching characters and situations that are fully exploited of their dramatic and comedic potential, this is an honest portrait of family tensions that Hollywood rarely approaches.” Edward Guthmann of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote “Writer-director Dover Kosashvili is a shrewd observer of cultural collision… read more
