Average Rating: 6.7/10
Reviews Counted: 32
Fresh: 26 | Rotten: 6
Italian director Saverio Costanzo delivers a gritty and intimate drama about how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict affects a Palestinian family and the Israeli soldiers occupying their home.
Average Rating: 6.4/10
Critic Reviews: 9
Fresh: 7 | Rotten: 2
Italian director Saverio Costanzo delivers a gritty and intimate drama about how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict affects a Palestinian family and the Israeli soldiers occupying their home.
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Average Rating: 3.1/5
User Ratings: 2,175
Italian filmmaker Saverio Costanzo based his feature debut, Private, on a true story of a Palestinian family whose home was taken over by a platoon of Israeli soldiers. In the film, the family lives in between a Palestinian village and an Israeli settlement, making their home a strategic point for the Israelis. Mohammad (well-known Palestinian actor Mohammad Bakri, who also directed the documentary Jenin, Jenin), the schoolteacher father, refuses to let his family abandon their home, despite the
R, 1 hr. 33 min.
Art House & International, Drama
Camilla Costanzo, Saverio Costanzo, Alessio Cremonini, Sayed Oashua
Nov 18, 2005 Limited
Jun 6, 2006
Typecast Releasing
All Critics (35) | Top Critics (10) | Fresh (27) | Rotten (6) | DVD (2)
The film's paranoia and sense of futility won't change your feelings about the Middle East. But it may open your eyes to the sense of violation that drives the endless cycle of violence there.
... involving and provocative ...
While the film is ultimately too limited in its scope to have much lingering impact, it does make for a thoughtful addition to the growing list of films dealing with the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
The Palestinian characters are so thinly conceived that they might as well be named Victims One through Seven, and they're far more developed than the Israeli characters.
Private, Italian director Saverio Costanzo's stunning human drama, would seem like something out of Kafka if it weren't based on real events and a relatively common fact of contemporary Palestinian life.
A midnight raid by Israeli soldiers turns the home of a Palestinian family into an occupied territory in Saverio Constanzo's politically loaded allegory.
Pocas veces una situación dramática puntual se convierte de manera tan gráfica en representación de un conflicto colectivo.
A sketchy but compelling Italian movie about Middle East power struggles.
... as politically defiant a metaphor for Israeli-Palestinian relations in the occupied territories as you'll ever see on screen.
The script is occasionally heavy-handed in laying out motivation and meaning, but excellent performances from the Israeli-Palestinian cast and a chilling moral elevate this to more than 'issue film' status.
Costanzo's debut feature film is potent stuff.
The movie is more noteworthy for the intimate suspense it brings to the subject of Israeli occupation than for any dramatic conclusion it chooses to reach.
Rather than evincing some subtlety in its depiction of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the movie's Italian makers prefer to engage in melodrama and simplistic Israel-bashing.
Costanzo is...successful in creating an emotional attachment to his characters.
Not only is it a compelling and gripping drama, but it dares to take a balanced look at the conflict through the eyes of the people in the middle of it.
The young Italian director Saverio Costanzo puts an unnervingly intimate twist on the costs of military occupation in this aptly claustrophobic drama.
The film's dramatic potential is never fully exploited, as if the filmmakers too never dared to explore what happened on the first floor.
Costanzo evokes a world of human complexities in his characters' relationships, and the film's sadly ironic ending is anything but simplistic.
In "Private" a Palestinian family is not only living in the battlefield of the occupied West Bank but now they must face the additional indignity of having the Israeli army occupy their house. The army gets the second floor(under no circumstances are the family to venture there) and the family must stay downstairs.
November 26, 2005Super Reviewer
This is a non artistic movie but a consiousnes of the meaning of the human fact and human issue that are behind the wars and occupation forces. Focused in the Israel-Palestine´s conflict, the italian director Saverio Constanzo makes a pretty balance film without using, the Manichean perspective and the pittyness, a
May 4, 2009
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