AZ: How did you come the decision of filming from the viewpoint of a person inside a tank?

SM: The events were the symptoms and not the issue. The issue was the bleeding soul and what’s going on inside the soldier’s soul during the war. I remember asking myself how I can tell the story on what’s going on inside the soldier’s soul. It sounds like a student’s project. Then I understood that the only way to deliver it or to understand it as an audience who wasn’t there, is not through the head but through the heart. To create such an emotional understanding, you need to create a strong experience. So I figured I will put you inside the tank so you will identify with the characters. You see only what they see. You know only what they know. My ambition was that you won’t feel like an objective audience. I wanted you to see the cross on the gun in front of your eyes…to see the victims staring straight into your eyes…to be there 10 minutes, 20 minutes to start to smell it, feel it and taste it and in the end to understand it. The whole cinematic concept came from this point of view.

AZ: In “Lebanon,” you show Israeli soldiers crying. When you were a soldier, did you cry and are you afraid this might make Israeli soldiers look weak?

SM: First, I think this is great for the Israeli soldiers’ image because people all over the world are thinking that Israeli soldiers are a bunch of killers walking around on the streets of Gaza killing babies. So I think it’s good for the image. I don’t remember if I actually cried but I can tell you that after the war, I found out suddenly that I don’t have tears anymore. You know, even when you see something stupid and funny on TV or you get angry at yourself, I didn’t even have those tears. I thought maybe this is what happens to someone who is in a war. Maybe this is the punishment. Just in the Venice Film Festival, in my first screening, 2,000 people stood up and clapped for 20 minutes, many of them crying. Suddenly, after 25 years, the tears came back to my eyes.

AZ: Why was it important to you to show indecisiveness in a character’s decision to pull the trigger in the film?

SM: Mentally, nothing can prepare you for war. People don’t kill in war because of some idea or because of following orders because soldiers are normal people. Normal people cannot kill because it’s not normal to kill. You need to be psycho to be able to do it. Of course the trick of the war is primitively simple. Take a human being and put him in a real-life dangerous situation. When you see the bullets fly by your body, then you are starting to kill. You don’t think anymore about all those ethical or moral codes you were raised on. If you stop to think with the logic of normal life, you won’t survive. So in the end, the first day, the process between a normal kid and a soldier that could kill…. that process was important for me to deliver. You are also falling (as a soldier) into a no-way out situation. If you are a gunner, you can pull the trigger or you can not pull the trigger. Death will come to you anyway. You are a kind of executor anyway.

AZ: Do you have nightmares?

SM: I wish it were that simple. I want to buy a deal like this. You know, I was in a war, have nightmares… that’s it. It’s much more complicated and would take hours to talk about. I had so many nightmares that when I have one, I know inside my dream that I’m dreaming. I can recognize the nightmares. In the end, the process was a kind of release. It was, let’s say the best treatment I could buy for myself. The hard time was to keep it locked inside. It wasn’t the reason. It was a bi-product.

AZ: What was the reason?

SM: I saw that I didn’t speak and now our kids are dealing with the same Lebanon again. I am lucky to have girls, so they don’t have to go to the army to fight. But my best friend, his only son died there. So the second Lebanon war was my motivation to start doing something after 25 years. I thought that if I will find a way to make an effective film, maybe just maybe, it can save a life here and there.

Official Film Web site: Watch the trailer here.