The last day of the Six-Day War. After they buried a dead companion and killed another one for wanting to continue to fight, two Egyptian soldiers, Haled and Gassan, walk by foot across the Sinai desert to reach the Suez canal. Along their way, they pass by a deserted Egyptian outpost and reach a UN Jeep with a dead UN observer in it, where they find whiskey. A British reporter arrives with Israeli soldiers, picks up Haled and Gassan in his van, but immediately throws them out after Gassan throws up on him. Haled is able to turn on the UN Jeep, but it gets stuck in the sand. The two get captured by Israeli soldiers who bring them along, but the next morning, the Israelis accidentaly walk into a minefield and die. Another group of Israeli soldiers shows up and starts chasing Haled and Gassan. Haled is shot first, while Gassan is shot at the Suez canal, as Egyptian soldiers exchange fire with Israeli soldiers.
A rare movie about the Six-Day War between Israel and Egypt, "Avanti Popolo" is unusal since it actually depicts the story shown from the perspective of two Egyptian soldiers, Haled and Gassan, and not from the Israeli perspective. The Egyptian soldiers were thus given a humane dimension, almost as three-dimensional characters. The episodic story is problematic, though, as it is structured as a road movie where they walk by foot across Sinai, and thus feels somewhat disjointed and random overall. Filmed in aesthetic locations with several good frames of sand dunes and moutains in the Sinai desert, "Avanti Popolo" is still more inspired cinematography-wise than narrative-wise, as it lacks a tighter narrative with a goal. One of the best episodes is when the Egyptian soldiers arrive at a Jeep with a dead UN observer, and Gassan, a struggling actor, finally opens up as the viewers discover a lot about him, whether it is his comment about the Swedish UN observer ("Even dead they look better than us!") or the irony of his first theater role ("I play a Jew! Shylock from the Merchant of Venice!"). Surprisingly, Israeli soldiers are depicted in worse light than the Egyptian protagonists, especially in the dark ending where a IDF unit just spots a wounded Israeli soldier and immediately starts shooting and chasing after Haled and Gassan, not even trying to listen to them that they were just helping the wounded IDF soldier who stumbled upon a minefield. The movie created the feeling of randomness and chaos of war, yet it still feels it needed a better and different storyframing than the one we got.
Grade:++
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