// Presented as part of April's Docs in Focus II Series //
 
Amos Gitaï / 2015, Venice, Atlanta Jewish Film Festival, Cinepolitica International Film Festival, CPH:DOX, Festival d'Avignon, Hong Kong, Jewish International Film Festival, Karlovy Vary, Munich, Nuremberg, Seville, Toronto, Vienna / 153'

On November 4, 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was shot dead in a public square. The culprit Yigal Amir opposed the Oslo Accords, which Rabin had painstakingly negotiated and for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with political rival Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat the year prior. Despite the ostensible simplicity of the crime, Yitzhak Rabin's political assassination and the subsequent trial elucidated deeper fissures in Israeli society—namely, the nefarious influence of radical rabbis and public figures of Israel's far-right—and its resounding effects, extinguishing a path to peace that remains elusive to this day.

Staging historical reenactments of the investigation alongside archival footage of the grim, gruesome event itself, Rabin, the Last Day offers a nuanced account of the unraveling of a modern democracy while gesturing to alternate histories—the peace that might have been. Amos Gitaï's documentary premiered at Venice, where it won the Human Rights Film Network Award; Toronto, Karlovy Vary, and Hong Kong; Munich, where it won a Special Mention, and Seville, where it won a Special Jury Award.