Critic Reviews

Sayar and Schnendar are likeable performers, and if Bilu and Hager had pushed the "private school for girls" side of Close To Home a little harder, they could have had a sharp satire on their hands. Instead, it's all played straight and close to the surface.

It presents an image of today's Israeli army, composed of teenagers who are by now several generations removed from the founders' original vision and have begun to question whether tactics designed to keep the country safe will only lead to increased levels of fear, humiliation and deadly violence.

Filmmakers Vardit Bilu and Dalia Hagar don't seem as interested in taking sides as they do in exploring universal themes.

One of the rare movies from Israel that refuses to spell out its politics, and you may wind up grateful for the ambiguity.

The film is much more subversive for treading back and forth between the political and the personal, the Arab and the Israeli points of view.

Mixes humor, tragedy, tenderness and political acumen into a well-observed coming-of-age format.

I won't argue for the cinematic virtues of this film; they don't exist. But as a pseudo-documentary portrait of real life behind the explosive headlines, it's absorbing.

The movie, written and directed by Vidi Bilu and Dalia Hager, is really a study of people coping with excruciating boredom and the absurd aspects of military life.

Close to Home is a slender slice -- a sliver is more like it -- of a very rich cake.

A slyly subversive insight into the role of women in the Israeli military, this is a surprisingly compassionate satire that makes its political points without resorting to caricature.