The Wanted 18

This movie about violence and how it comes into intimate spaces refuses to make even animals only animal. It's beautiful and important and very strange.

The absurdist sectarian comedy gives way, as it inevitably does in this conflict, to tragedy, and death both human and animal. While Shomali resists easy cynicism while seeming to have almost every excuse to indulge it, he doesn’t try to craft a hopeful parable out of his material either.

Even at 75 minutes, it can feel padded with footage whose connection to the central plot is tenuous. But at its best, The Wanted 18 follows a worthy tradition of highlighting absurdities that arise during conflict.

Imaginatively interspersing testimonials with reenactments, comic panels and Claymation, the film plays out like an entertaining absurdist satire.

It’s a story of utopia ruined by evil Israeli oppressors, and though that’s certainly accurate on some level, the film simply doesn’t go into enough detail, or question the interviewees’ rose-tinted nostalgia.

The eccentric artistry calls so much attention to itself as to make the subject of the film feel like an afterthought.