Competing for the Palme d'Or for the second year in a row ­ after last year's Kadosh (Sacred) ­ Israeli director Amos Gitai returns to Cannes. Backed by the same producers and using virtually the same production crew, Kippur is sure to encourage discussion, if not heated argument, by virtue of theme alone ­ the beginning of the Yom Kippur war in October 1973.

Gitai is one of those festival personalities who commands attention. In 1986, Esther, an Israeli-French co-production lensed partially by the eminent French cinematographer Henri Alekan, was invited to participate at Cannes in Critics' Week. A few years later, Berlin Jerusalem (1989) was invited to Venice. Another collaboration with Alekan and Israeli cinematographer Nuritz Aviv, the film dealt with the emigration of German writer Else Lasker-Schüler to Israel, and starred Lisa Kreuzer.

Gitai scored a hat-trick when Berlin was added to the string of Gitai/Alekan festival triumphs with the film Golem, The Spirit
Of Exile (1991). A cross-European co-production, it premiered in the 1992 International Forum of Young Cinema as part of a four-film tribute to the director. Lead actress Hanna Schygulla was supported by such screen and stage luminaries as Samuel Fuller, Bernardo Bertolucci, Marceline Loridan, Philippe Garrel, Sotigui Kouyate (Peter Brooks ensemble) and Antonio Carallo (Pina Bausch Dance Company). The film completed Gitai's trilogy on exile and emigration.

Mea Shearim, Jerusalem's ultra-orthodox Jewish quarter, where tourists are often attacked on the streets because of affronts to the accepted dress code. "It is through fiction," he added, "that I am able to show the contradictions inherent in these communities' imperviousness to our times."

Born in 1950 in Haifa, Gitai is the son of Munio Gitai, a member of the pre-war Bauhaus in Germany. He studied architecture in Haifa and at the University of California and was wounded in action in the Yom Kippur War ­ which goes a long way to explaining why he was interested in making a film on the subject.

"When I'd paid my debts to my family spirits," Gitai said in an interview which was published in Cinemaya, "I felt I was free to make films. I never studied cinema formally. But I think not studying cinema helped me a great deal, because films are so inter-referential today. I find architecture and cinema have a lot in common ­ because they are not intimate arts like writing or painting. You have to mobilise other people."

Gitai's interest in film-making stems back to Super-8 films and some documentaries. One of the latter, made for Israeli TV, Bait (The House, 1977), was not aired on the grounds that it was too pro-Palestinian. It was a portrayal of three families ­ Jewish, Arab, and a Jewish-Arab couple ­ all living together in the Wadi Rushmia River Valley east of Haifa.

Fiction or not, Gitai's films are always based on fact and thorough research of the subject matter. In his widely praised documentary The Wadi 1981-1991 he explored, over a decade, the possibilities and impossibilities of full integration between countless social factions in Israel, within the microcosm of a Haifa slum. In the feature film Devarim (1995), presented at Venice, he adapted a well known Hebrew novel to the screen in such a way as to highlight the contradictions within modern-day Tel Aviv life. Much the same holds true for Kadosh (1999), a portrait of the city of Jerusalem as well as
an insight into an oppressive Jewish Orthodox community.

Kippur begins on 8 October 1973 ­ Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement). At the very beginning of the Israeli-Syrian conflict, a helicopter is hit by a missile and shot down behind Syrian lines. In the helicopter is a seven-man rescue team, among them Amos Gitai. As related in the film, this was a closely knit unit comprised of individuals from different backgrounds. Some died, others were seriously wounded, one (Gitai) was hospitalised for a time. By the time the war ended on 11 October 1973, over 12,000 died on Israeli and Arab sides, more than 25,000 were wounded, and nearly 10,000 had been taken prisoner ­ Kippur presents the human side of the story and evaluates the human cost of that war.

Ron Holloway