Beaufort (15) Dir: Joseph Cedar
With: Oshri Cohen, Itay Tiran

War, as ever, is hell in Joseph Cedar's sombre feature, which was nominated for a best foreign film Oscar but lost out to The Counterfeiters. Set in Lebanon months before withdrawal, the story focuses on a small Israeli army unit positioned in the mountains near the 12th-century fortress of Beaufort. Daily life is a mixture of boredom and fear as Hezbollah's missiles rain in from the surrounding hills. Though the characters fail to stray far from war-movie stereotypes, there are outstanding performances from Oshri Cohen as the soldier who wants to hold out to the last, and Itay Tiran as the disillusioned fighter desperate to see home again.