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a film by Romed Wyder

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Dawn, Palestine, 1947

by Amos Lassen

reviewsbyamoslassen.com

Romed Wyder’s film, “Dawn” is a psychological thriller based on the novel by Elie Wiesel. The story takes place in Palestine in 1947, during the British mandate period as Zionists are fighting for the establishment of a Jewish state. When the British deny entry to the survivors of the concentration camps coming by boat to Palestine, they become “enemy number one” of the Zionist project. A member of the armed Jewish underground is sentenced to death by the British authorities and in return, the resistance kidnaps a British officer. The insurgents spend the night together, awaiting the outcome of the negotiation. If the British hang their friend at dawn, one of them will shoot the British officer held as a hostage.

Four comrades in arms attempt to influence the young Elisha, to make him overcome his conflicts of conscience and fully commit to their cause. In the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “Dawn” sheds a new light on a key moment in history that allows for the resituating of the current political disputes. The film is a frightening and lucid journey into the mind of Elisha (Joel Basman), a young Zionist terrorist who is consumed by doubt and haunted by the ghosts of an ever-present past.

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The captivating psychological huis clos Dawn, coming soon to Swiss screens

by Giorgia del Don

www.cineuropa.org

Romed Wyder steps back into the limelight with his latest compelling feature film, a frightening and lucid journey into the mind of a young Zionist terrorist

After more than a year’s anticipation (having had its first international screening at the Solothurn Film Festival 2014) Dawn is finally hitting Swiss screens: on 29 April in the French-speaking part of Switzerland and on 10 June in the German-speaking part of the country. A full ten years after Absolut, Romed Wyder steps back into the limelight with his latest compelling feature film, which is a frightening and lucid journey into the mind of Elisha (played by the highly-talented Joel Basman), a young Zionist terrorist who is consumed by doubt and haunted by the ghosts of an ever-present past.

Dawn is the film adaptation of the novel Dawn by Elie Wiesel, who miraculously survived imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp. As Wyder himself has said, what fascinated him right from the start was why this Nobel Peace Prize laureate felt the need to write a story about the state of mind of a “trainee” terrorist, a man who chooses violence as his only weapon and escape. This ambiguity, the desire to put yourself in the shoes of the enemy, of that dark alter ego that spies on us relentlessly, characterises Wyder’s entire film, transforming it into a moment suspended between an abhorrent past and a future as enticing as it is uncertain.

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