We’re getting close to that eight-year mark between features and we’ve just learned that Samuel Maoz is set to close out the trilogy and take another critical jab at the Israeli military-industrial complex with It’s Good to Die For Your Country — a film that will follow 2009’s Lebanon and 2017’s Foxtrot. Variety reports that producer Eitan Mansuri lassoed The Match Factory and Sophie Dulac to help back the project. It sounds like they are still in finding funds mode so the absolute earliest might be a Venice premiere in ’24 (the lieu where the filmmaker won the Golden Lion and Silver Lion).
It’s Good to Die For Your Country revolves around two childhood friends in their late 50’s and 60’s who grew up believing that (serving in the army) was a good thing. Essentially this continues in the larger theme of the implication of war on families.
Our Tommaso Tocci reviewed Maoz’s sophomore film out of Venice – “Foxtrot opens on a classic setup: army representatives at the doorstep, a bell ringing, and a mother instantly and painfully realizing what news they bring. Except the tone and pacing of the whole thing feel different, simultaneously colder, heightened and more acutely performative.”
Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).
