The Gatekeepers

Documentarian Dror Moreh interviews six former chiefs of Shin Bet, the intelligence agency charged with defending Israel against terrorism, espionage and the release of state secrets. The movie begins by telling us they have never been interviewed about their work—leaving us to fill in the implied “until now” ourselves. Moreh largely eschews the agitprop buffoonery of a Michael Moore (though he can't resist a few swipes at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he plainly despises), modeling his movie on the more subtly persuasive Errol Morris of The Fog of War, a particular favorite of his. Moreh's thesis, that the Israeli right and the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza both threaten long-term disaster for Israel, is shared by his subjects with unsettling (and maybe even suspicious) unanimity.