SummaryA celebrated Israeli filmmaker named Y arrives in a remote desert village to present one of his films at a local library. Struggling to cope with the recent news of his mother’s terminal illness, he is pushed into a spiral of rage when the host of the screening, a government employee, asks him to sign a form placing restrictions on what he can sa... Read More
Directed By:Nadav Lapid
Written By:Haim Lapid, Nadav Lapid
Ahed's Knee
Metascore
Generally Favorable
79
User score
Universal Acclaim
8.3
My Score
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Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
89% Positive
16 Reviews
16 Reviews
11% Mixed
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Mar 31, 2022
100
Ultimately, the edge that Navid is pushing is less to do with a rant against the Israeli government than in creating a cinematic depiction of a tortured psychological state, in both the individual and collective meanings of that word.
Mar 21, 2022
88
Ahed's Knee is a fascinating movie that evades most complaints of not having anything to say by showcasing its characters struggling to explain free-floating anxieties that have to do with a lot of things. It's also stylish as hell.
Mar 17, 2022
80
There’s no doubt that this is, in several senses, a personal film. But that doesn’t mean that the character is simply the author’s mouthpiece; one of the things that gives this movie its raw, unbalanced energy is the indeterminacy of the distance between them.
Jul 11, 2021
80
Despite all the swagger, this is not style for style’s sake. It’s more about Lapid inventing his own language: one that’s highly personal, but also tries to expand horizons at a time when films tend to resemble TV shows more and more, especially in how they’re directed.
Jul 11, 2021
75
The performances are striking and do much to keep the film on a tightrope. Overall, though, it’s a work of robust intellectual energy and raging conflict that could come across as hectoring and even bullying. While fizzing with ideas and ideologies about cultural freedom, it’s also a very physical film, with close ups of skin — knees, toes, torsos — and the dry crunch of the stony desert.
May 3, 2022
63
It’s all entertaining enough, in a shaggy way. But if the director can’t stay focused on his own subject, how are we expected to do so?
Mar 18, 2022
42
If it sounds flamboyantly colorful to call Ahed’s Knee the cinematic equivalent of an echoing regurgitative scream, it’s also accurate. The film is a highly personal work that becomes trapped in its own feedback loop, making the same point over and over.
User score
Universal Acclaim
75% Positive
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
25% Mixed
1 Rating
1 Rating
0% Negative
0 Ratings
0 Ratings
May 24, 2022
8
'Ahed's Knee' may be disorienting, but we're talking about the declaration of a frustrated filmmaker here, so the somewhat impenetrable approach is more than understandable. By telling a story within a story about Israeli soldiers taking cyanide pills in case they're captured during battle, Nadav Lapid makes a sad but precise comparison with art: being an artist in a warmongering country requires you to surrender to it; if not, then you don't deserve to live in a God-picked land. Lapid takes us into the middle of his identity conflict with his newest film: is it ok to hate everything your country represents? This is transgressive cinema at its finest.
Production Company:
- Les Films du Bal
- Komplizen Film
- Pie Films
- Arte France Cinéma
- Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF)
- ARTE
- ARTE
- Arte G.E.I.E.
- Kinology
- Pyramide Distribution
- Decia Films
- Srab Films
- Mandarin Films
- Nord-Ouest Films
- Les Films Velvet
- 2425 Films
- L'Aide aux cinémas du monde
- Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée (CNC)
- Institut français
- Cinereach
- Israel Film Fund
- Cinémage 14
- Israel Film Council
- The Ministry of Culture and Sports
Release Date:Mar 18, 2022
Duration:1 h 49 m
Awards
Awards of the Israeli Film Academy
• 7 Nominations
Cannes Film Festival
• 1 Win & 2 Nominations
Seville European Film Festival
• 1 Nomination
