Guus Bosman

software engineering director


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To See If I'm Smiling

To See If I'm Smiling.The third movie I saw on Full Frame this year was To See If I'm Smiling. The movie is about six Isreali women who look back at their compulsary military service, and their experiences. So somehow I saw 3 movies in a row about female warriors. Of the 3, I liked Lioness the best with My Daughter the Terrorist a close second, but To See If I'm Smiling is a strong film as well.

The title refers to a picture that one of the main subjects talks about. The subject of the film is not just female soldiers, but also on the behavior of young men and women serving in the border zone of Israel. One of the women talks honestly about crossing the line -- how at one point she made Arab civilians stand in the sun for many hours for example, to punish them for the death of one of her friends she just learned about. She knows that the civilians have nothing to do with that death, and so do her soldiers, but she's honest about how stress and war-like circumstances make good people do bad things. Another woman says that serving in the military has learned her that she has an utterly evil side.

The film isn't always very strong in its technical execution -- the interviews feel a bit artificial at times. However, the story it tells is powerful and this quite makes up for the technical deficiencies.

It's interesting to see three different approaches to female warriors. The United States military has not quite figured out how to deal with female soldiers (it's only in the last 15 years or so that female soldiers have been deployed in large scale into war areas), whereas in Israel men and women both are expected to serve in the military service for two years. The Tamil Tigers have no trouble with using women in their rebel rmy and they take this to an extreme by training them for suicide terrorist attacks.

To See If I'm Smiling won an award last year at IDFA, a documentary festival in Amsterdam.

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