Be All You Can Be: Samuel Maoz’s Closing Out Trilogy with “It’s Good to Die For Your Country”

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.”