The Worst Film Ever

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Rock in the Red Zone (2014) is an Israeli documentary written, produced, and directed by Laura Bialis. Most of the footage comes from the small city of Sderot. Sderot is located on the border of Gaza, which basically means that it's in a combat zone. Rocket attacks on Sderot are a constant aspect of life there. It's not my place in an IMDb movie review to even suggest that there's an easy answer to why Hamas sends rockets against Sderot, or why the Israeli Defense Forces bomb and invade Gaza. The attacks against Sderot are a reality. Two rockets hit Sderot on July 1, 2016, 10 days before I wrote this review.As a psychiatrist tells us in the film, she's seeing PTSD in a majority of children in Sderot. However, as she says, it's not really Post Traumatic, because there's no Post. The trauma continues. What makes Sderot particularly interesting is that almost all of its population are Sephardic Jews, primarily from Morocco. These Jewish immigrants have brought their Sephardic culture to Sderot, and their music is spreading throughout Israel.One musician in Sdertot--Avi Vaknin--is one of the musicians helping to spread the music. He's gifted, dynamic, and highly articulate. Director Bialis knows that he will be the centerpiece of her documentary. Actually, he becomes more than that, but you'll have to see the movie to find out what happens.We saw the film in the Dryden Theatre in the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, NY. It was shown as part of the excellent Rochester Jewish Film Festival. Congratulations to the RJFF for bringing Avi Vaknin to Rochester to perform onstage at the Festival.This film is worth seeing, but how you can see it poses a problem. As far as I can tell, it's not available on DVD. So, unless you are lucky enough to see it at another film festival, you'll have to wait for it to become available for the the small screen. Let's hope that happens.