Zot Hi Ha'aretz: A dusty, earnest slog through history

Is it worth your time?

Look, if you’re looking for a breezy Friday night watch, keep walking. Zot Hi Ha'aretz is heavy, dry, and feels every bit of its fifty-year scope. It’s for the folks who want to see how the sausage—or rather, the state—was made, warts and all.

If you hate slow-moving historical dramas that lean way too hard into the "pioneering spirit" angle, you’ll probably be checking your phone twenty minutes in. It’s not exactly dynamic.

The desert doesn't give up easy

There’s this one sequence where the characters are just trying to move a rock, or maybe it’s a pile of dirt—it’s honestly hard to tell after a while. The camera just lingers there. Nobody is talking. You can practically feel the grit in your teeth just watching them struggle with the landscape.

It’s weirdly hypnotic, though. It reminded me a bit of the raw, unpolished effort you see in Gui lai, where the focus is less on the big picture and more on the sheer exhaustion of just existing in a difficult place.

Some notes from the back of my notebook:

• Raphael Klatchkin has this look in his eyes that says he hasn't slept since 1920. It's fantastic.
• The lighting in the desert scenes is surprisingly harsh. It’s not meant to be pretty, and it definitely isn't.
• I swear there's a scene where someone is pouring water and the sound effect is way too loud in the mix. It caught me off guard.
• The acting feels very "stage-bound." It’s like they forgot they weren't in a theater, which actually adds to the strange, stiff charm of the whole thing.

It’s not as slick as some of the other historical stuff I’ve seen lately, like the stuff in A Diplomatic Mission. But there’s an honesty here. It isn't trying to sell you a postcard version of history.

Sometimes the film gets so caught up in the "big idea" of the land that it forgets to give the characters a real conversation. You’ll be watching two people stand in front of a horizon, and they’re just reciting lines that feel like they belong on a monument. It’s a bit much.

Still, you can tell the people who made this were exhausted. You don’t film in that kind of heat without losing a little bit of your mind. 🌵

I wouldn't call it a masterpiece. I’d call it a document. It’s one of those movies that functions better as a record of a specific time and mindset than as actual entertainment. Worth a watch if you're feeling patient, though.