It might seem that State of Rage is a documentary that has been overtaken by events. The subject matter is the West Bank, in the Palestinian occupied territories – as it airs, Israel’s new bombardment of Lebanon and continuing destruction of Gaza have relegated its West Bank activities to newspapers’ inside pages.
But by taking us into two households, one in the Palestinian city of Jenin and the other in the Israeli settlement of Havat Gilad – a community built on land taken from the Palestinians, as part of a process of expansion of Israeli territory that is illegal under international law – Marcel Mettelsiefen’s film offers an urgent, clarifying picture of the psychology of the occupier, and of the occupied. While vividly capturing the contemporary state of play on the ground, the voice it gives to Israeli and Palestinian youth also casts a bleak vision of the future. Every minute of it contains a quote to stop the heart.
