Children of the Sun

Director: Ran Tal

Review By Max Burke

Children of the Sun is a brief, 70 minute feature documentary from first time director Ran Tal. The film is a subjective, impressionistic account of the early days of the kibbutz – the experimental, communal living compounds in which many Israeli children were born into in the early 20th century. The film uses exclusively archival footage of kibbutzniks and their young children working, playing, and growing up on the kibbutz with voice-over from the first generation of children who were raised on the kibbutz.

The film tracks the controversial kibbutz policies of having children live together away from their parents, in a communal setting, to their extensive physical and military training as they prepared to become “The New Man,” which would lead Israel into a utopian future of great glory. Eventually, the kibbutz reformed their most controversial policies and fell out of favor with a new tide of politicians and regular Israelis who saw that in order to preserve their nation they would have to scale back the idealism of some of the more radical elements of their society and face up to the increasingly volatile political situation in the middle east.

Tal's film is a noble attempt at capturing the real feelings and memories of those early children of the kibbutz who were raised to believe they would inaugurate a new era of hope and progress in Israel. Each interview subject has their own take on the kibbutz experience – some are overtly critical, others are sadly nostalgic for the life they enjoyed on the kibbutz. Their reflections and the excellent archival footage that Tal has brought to light during the making of the film are the best aspects of Children of the Sun.

However, the film suffers greatly from the lack of a framing device which situates the story of the kibbutz in a larger socio-political context. A dearth of background information about why and how the kibbutz, and Israel itself, came into being and how both transformed as a result of regional pressures and internal strife makes it difficult to take the film at face value. It is, of course, understandable that Tal has set out to craft a film that is about the real human experience of growing up on a kibbutz, rather than a political history of Israel in the second half of the twentieth century, but the two stories are simply inseparable.

Life on the kibbutz was informed by changes in the Israeli political landscape, and vice-versa, but there isn't even an attempt to make an objective assessment of the kibbutz' triumphs and failings. Instead, Tal relies on the genuinely moving remembrances of actual children of the kibbutz, and the totalizing power of raw human emotion, to guide the film's narrative long. Every documentary tells a story, and none can be totally objective. However, it is important to at least attempt to create a sense of perspective when crafting a documentary, particularly when the subject is as controversial as the one Tal has chosen to address.

Children of the Sun, instead, is a wasted opportunity. What could have been an important documentary about an aspect of modern Israeli and Jewish history instead comes off as a subjective love letter to a far gone era, with no self-reflection or objective context to complicate the wealth of excellent archival footage and interviews Tal has compiled.