[Editor’s note: Both Jane Enkin and myself have reviewed this film and I am going to present both reviews]
Oxygen (Hamtzen)
Tuesday, May 12 | 2:00 p.m. | Berney Theatre | Asper Jewish Community Campus
Feature | Israel | 2025 | Director: Netalie Braun | Hebrew with English subtitles | 95 minutes | 18A
Film Trailer | Tickets
Review of Oxygen by Rhonda Spivak
Netalie Braun’s drama Oxygen has many layers to it, presenting complex facets of Israeli society—it’s a serious film, that is not lighthearted. It is about a 40ish single mother Chani , a teacher and a poet, who takes extreme action to prevent her 21-year-old son in the prestigious Golani combat unit from returning to a war on the front in Lebanon.
There is no doubt that every Israeli mother seeing a son go into combat in a war that could lead to injury and casualty would be worried, and sleepless, and would be glued to the television on hearing there are Israeli casualties, as this film sows. In the film, Chani was waiting for her son to be discharged but on the day this was to happen the third Lebanon war breaks out. Chani panics, doing everything she can to try to get her son moved out of his unit, before he crosses over into Lebanon. He has asthma and she is worried he won’t be able to breathe.‘The son makes it clear that he feels his place is with his unit, something his mother seems not able to understand. She is afraid of losing him.
The film is unquestionably political- suggesting that military solutions are not solutions or the only solutions. At the same time the film really does not outline how a peaceful scenario exists with Hezbollah in Lebanon not demilitarized. There is no exploration of why the Israelis feel they need to go into Lebanon—to enable the Israeli civilian population in the north to be able to live in their communities. ( Note that 80% of Jewish Israelis think Israel should continue fighting Hizbullah, according to an Israel Democracy Institute poll conducted -12 2026, as per the Times of Israe)
Braun told the Jerusalem Post regarding the film,“ I’m not naïve, and I don’t live in la-la land. I know it’s not only in our hands whether there will be a war or not,” she said. “I do think you need an army.”
Aside from the politics, the movie is also about motherhood and the bonds and boundaries between mother and child. It deals with with motherhood in a universal sense, a relationship between of total love and examines the boundaries within a relationship , and the questions of to what extent we can decide for our children who are autonomous human beings, and the process of letting go.
The film also explores at the costs of war in terms of mental health issues and PTSD. Chani’s father a general who liberated Jerusalem in the 1967 war, is shown as having PTSD. It is estimated that there will be thousands of Israeli soldiers who will have PTSD as a result of going to war since 7, 2023. There is also a scene of a soldier who had lost a limb doing rehab in a swimming pool. In Gaza, many Israeli soldiers lost their limbs.
The acting and the layers of drama are well done. This film is worth seeing in order to analyze all of its themes-it will definitely spark conversation, for what is in it and what is not in it. It won Best Feature Film at the Jerusalem Film Festival in 2024. There is a full range of political expression in Israel, as this film shows.
I would like to share one of my thoughts on seeing the film. I couldn’t help but think there is nothing in the film which would show why it is, that in spite of all the wars, Israel in 2026 is ranked the 8th happiest country on earth, well above Canada. I think it has to do with Israelis having a sense of purpose, mission and destiny, of wanting to take part in living in a Jewish state when many previous generations of Jews could not have dreamed of achieving this, and of ultimately being ready to make sacrifices for country.
Review of Oxygen by Jane Enkin
This is a tender, gentle film about harsh subject matter – the emotional lives of Israelis who experience an ongoing cycle of war.
Anat is a committed elementary teacher and a writer and lover of poetry, who keeps an eye on her elderly, PTSD-stricken father. But above all, she is a mother – the caring, concerned mother of a young man finishing his mandatory service in the Israeli army. War with Lebanon breaks out and the son, Ido, does not return after his expected discharge. When mother and son eventually are together, they clash over their roles and obligations as mother and as soldier, while demonstrating their deep affection. With subtle, intense performances, the film grapples with the contradictions and challenges of Israeli life.
Sound is important in this film. Radio and TV reports of the war, plus a radio program with interviews of mothers of soldiers, play throughout the film. Not every word of the broadcasts in the background is translated in the captions, but the director highlights snippets of sound, telling us that soldiers have been kidnapped and children have been killed. The sound of waves and rushing water appears often. Because Anat and her father live in the north of Israel and the fighting is on the border with Lebanon, there are daily air raid sirens. The struggle for breath is another potent image in the film.
The film is visually vivid. The camera lingers as Anat performs daily tasks like cooking and doing laundry, and a party in a nightclub is a wild swirl of colour and light. Anat listens to the radio as she goes through a car wash, deeper and deeper into darkness with water and noise swirling around her car. Anat and Ido have a playful time at the beach, with the camera at the level of the waves. At times, we see Ido as Anat still sees him in her mind’s eye, a young, vulnerable boy. Late in the film, Anat watches as injured soldiers go through rehab in a pool. Anat is disturbed, thinking of her own son’s chances of surviving unharmed, but we are given a graceful display of strength and endurance, with beautiful underwater photography.
Thought-provoking as well as moving, this film is highly recommended.
