Nadav Lapid continues to take a scalpel to contemporary Israel in Ahed’s Knee, although this particular dissection might leave a bigger scar. The Kindergarten Teacher (2014) and Synonyms (2019) already flirted with autobiography, but his fourth feature pushes forward into full autofiction, sending a director named Y. (Avshalom Pollak) to the Arava desert for a screening of one of his films, only to discover that open discussion of its content is frowned upon. The director’s response may be blunt, even strident, but the film’s own approach to perspective is far more nuanced, as Lapid’s state-of-the-nation ideas are refracted through Shai Goldman’s agitated, intricate camerawork to exhilarating effect. As Y. himself remarks at the beginning of the screening, pay attention to the style.
As he heads to the desert, Y. is in the midst. In 2017, a Palestinian girl named Ahed Tamini was filmed slapping a couple of Israeli soldiers in response to the shooting of her cousin. The resultant viral video provoked admiration, but also ire, including that of far-right politician Bezalel Smotrich, who suggested on Twitter that Tamini be shot in the knee. As Y. sits in the military plane taking him from Tel Aviv to Sapir, he asks the pilot if he can film the landscape from the cockpit with his iPhone, which becomes the first in a series of video messages he sends to his mother, who writes the screenplays for his films and is suffering from lung cancer.
