Kibbutz (2005)

Genre

documentary film

Country

Israel

How it feels

This documentary follows members of an Israeli kibbutz over five years as their community falls apart economically and ideologically. It focuses on the director's own family and three elderly women who represent the fading original ideals of the kibbutz.

personalmelancholicobservationalslow-pacedintimatereflectivesobering

What happens

Kibbutz (Hebrew: קיבוץ) is a 2005 Israeli documentary directed by Racheli Schwartz about Kibbutz Hulata, where she lived for 30 years. The documentary follows various members, including Schwartz's own family, over the course of five years, tracing the stages of grieving and disillusionment that follow the kibbutz's economic collapse and disintegration as the community reduces its communal commitment to its members. Three older women from the founding generation become symbols of the kibbutz's lost ideals and abandoned history, as they die off, one by one. The director, for whom the narrative is a very personal story, admits early on that “making the movie helped me to decide to stay.” (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

• The Forgotten Refugees (2005)
• Children of the Sun (2007)
• Next Year in Argentina (2005)
• Inventing Our Life: The Kibbutz Experiment (2010)
• 5 Days (2005)
• The Land of the Settlers (2005)
• Kadishman (2005)
• Sun Bay (2025)