THE FIRST 54 YEARS – AN ABBREVIATED MANUAL FOR MILITARY OCCUPATION

Avi Mograbi / France, Finland, Israel, Germany / 2021 / 110 min / Danish Premiere

How do you occupy another country? The great docu-provocateur of Israeli cinema gives us his take on a political satire against a serious background.

With Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza as a case study, you are invited to a deeply ironic course on how to occupy a country over a period of more than five decades. An instruction manual from the perspective of the dominant force, but staged by Avi Mograbi, who with Socratic irony inaugurates us in the modern history of his country, supplemented by testimonies of a systematic assault on the civilian population told by former soldiers. The satire is coarse and the humour pitch-black in a hyperbolic film for both beginners and seasoned followers of the bitter and endless conflict, presented like never before: as a militant-strategic briefing on the violation of human rights.