Defamation

This brave documentary takes on the topic of anti-Semitism in a relentlessly probing and original way.

Defamation tries to give all sides a full airing, but it's not hard to guess the director's own feeling. At the end, he says, "Putting too much emphasis on the past, as horrific as it has been, is holding us back."

End result is at once intelligent, wry and -- there's no way around it -- quintessentially Jewish, in the best sense.

Like Moore’s modus, Shamir’s stroll is sloppy, but his willingness to tip sacred cows is truly courageous.

The most affecting scenes, however, involve the class of Israeli teenagers visiting Auschwitz.

Like most good documentaries, Defamation poses more questions than it purports to answer, before arriving at the mildly reductive postulation that what's past is past.

Disorganized and somewhat annoying.