Awards
Chicago International Documentary Film Festival
International Press AwardTel-Aviv Documentary Film Festival 2003
Best Feature Documentary
First Prize for Editing
HotDocs 2004
Special Jury AwardSyracuse International Film Festival
Best DocumentaryAFO Film Festival 2004
Best DocumentaryAnonimul Film Festival 2004
Best Director
After a car packed with explosives struck a bus in June 2002 at Meggido Junction, near Tel Aviv, 16 of the 17 victims were accounted for. The sole unidentified victim of this suicide terrorist attack was buried a few weeks later, anonymously. The police stopped searching, believing that he must have been a foreign worker.No. 17 is Anonymous documents over a period of six months the search for the identity of a man whose body was badly mutilated and whom no one claimed missing. The film is also a record of the stories of several people who were affected directly or indirectly by the bombing, creating a portrait of a society living under the shadow of death. When it seems that the investigation has reached a dead end a vague lead suddenly appears.
"The weary acceptance of violence in an atmosphere of perpetual siege is the subject of the Israeli journalist David Ofek's small, chilly documentary No. 17...
The scenes of the (police sketch) artist plying his craft and coming up with what eventually turns out to be an uncanny likeness, are the most involving moments in a movie that's a critique of detachment. The film could be seen as Mr. Ofek's personal response to violence in a place where people, shellshocked by terrorism that has no end in sight, increasingly take the state of siege for granted."
-Stephen Holden, The New York Times
The National Center For Jewish Film
Brandeis University, Lown 102, MS053, Waltham MA 02454
P: (781) 899 7044, F: (781) 736 2070
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