Michael Phillips: Looking for the human cost of the Israel-Hamas war, through filmmakers’ lenses

I watched a brilliant and heartbreaking short film the other day, posted online by the New Yorker magazine as part of its story of filmmaker Yahav Winner, killed Oct. 7 in the Hamas extremists’ massacre of Israeli citizens.

Several times, for many reasons, I’ve returned to that film, titled “The Boy,” to imagine the career Winner might’ve had; to marvel at the patient, precise rightness of every visual decision he made; and to help an outsider, me, comprehend a conflict with a now-remote start and no foreseeable finish. Meantime, the Israel-Hamas war’s death toll includes an estimated 1,400 Israelis and more than 10,000 Palestinians. In a month.

“The Boy” is It is 25 minutes long, and it is as wide as