TORONTO- Like journalists, filmmakers, especially the documentary kind, are generally better at spotting problems than solutions. So it was no surprise that problems loomed large, solutions less so, in one of the first movies to screen at the Toronto International Film Festival as it opened here on Thursday.
That would be “The Gatekeepers,†the director Dror Moreh's documentary exploration of the Shin Bet, Israel's domestic security service, as described on screen by six of its former leaders.
“The Gatekeepers†was shown for the press and industry at 11:45 a.m. on Thursday, and the crowd was surprisingly large, given that festival officials were still busy handing out credentials and modes t gift bags to arriving attendees. On camera, the Shin Bet leaders described a long series of often minor victories and sometimes major defeats as they confronted rebellion and terrorist threats, not just from angry Palestinians, but also from Israeli discontents. One of those discontents, Yigal Amir, shot and killed the prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, in 1995, leading to the resignation of Carmi Gillon, a Shin Bet official interviewed in the film.
It was all there- the intifada, the disintegration of the Oslo accords, bus bombs, Jewish counter-attacks. Everything but a solution, which made it a fine way for the assembled journalists and film executives, who greeted the film with a ripple of applause, to begin their festival experience.
On picking up their credentials, actually, journalists were confronted with another problem-what to do with the contents of those modest gift bags, which contained, along with the usual paperwork, a warm bottle of diet Coke, a tin of breath mints and a package of condoms. Bottles of Coke were being tucked behind sofa cushions or deposited on ledges and tables around the Hyatt Regency, where credentials were handed out. Where the condoms wound up is less certain.
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