The Gatekeepers (documentary film)
| The Gatekeepers | |
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Promotional poster
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| Directed by | Dror Moreh |
| Produced by | Estelle Fialon Philippa Kowarsky Dror Moreh |
| Starring |
Ami Ayalon Avi Dichter Yuval Diskin Carmi Gillon Yaakov Peri Avraham Shalom |
| Music by | Ab Ovo Jérôme Chassagnard Régis Baillet |
| Cinematography | Avner Shahaf |
| Edited by | Oron Adar |
| Distributed by | Cinephil (international) Sony Pictures Classics (U.S.) |
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Release date
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Running time
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95 minutes |
| Country | Israel France Belgium Germany |
| Language | Hebrew |
| Budget | $1.5 million (€1.3 million) |
| Box office | $2,415,727 |
The Gatekeepers (Hebrew: שומרי הסף "Shomrei HaSaf") is a 2012 internationally co-produced documentary film by director Dror Moreh that tells the story of the Israeli internal security service, Shin Bet (known in Hebrew as 'Shabak'), from the perspective of six of its former heads.
The film combines in-depth interviews, archival footage, and computer animation to recount the role that the group played in Israel’s security from the Six-Day War to the present. The film was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 85th Academy Awards.
Moreh has explained in interviews that he was inspired to make the film after watching Errol Morris’s Academy Award-winning documentary The Fog of War. Having just completed a film about former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, he came to realize the decisive role that the Shin Bet had played behind the scenes for the past forty years. "The idea to do this movie came to me while I was working on my previous film, Sharon. From my discussions with the prime minister’s innermost circle of advisors, I learned how the critique of some of these Gatekeepers influenced Sharon’s decision to disengage from Gaza."
The problem, according to Moreh, was getting the "Gatekeepers", or former heads of the Shin Bet, to agree to appear on camera and discuss their work and opinions. Given the secretive nature of the organization, none of them had ever done this before, and many of the topics he hoped to discuss with them were either classified or highly sensitive.
Despite this initial difficulty, Moreh contacted one of the "Gatekeepers", Ami Ayalon, who had since been elected to the Knesset for the Labor Party and was serving as a Minister without Portfolio in the Security Cabinet. Much to his surprise, Ayalon not only agreed to participate, he also helped Moreh contact the other surviving former heads of the Shin Bet: Avraham Shalom, Yaakov Peri, Carmi Gillon, and Avi Dichter. The sixth participant in the film, Yuval Diskin, was still serving as head of the Shin Bet at the time.
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