Août, avant l'explosion

August is a partly documentary and partly fictional film that portrays a month in the life of a filmmaker and his wife. He wishes to document the month of August, since he believes that this month constitutes a metaphor of whatever is hateful in the State of Israel. She, on the contrary, is rather fond of August, which represents to her all that is optimistic. And indeed the filmmaker goes out to the street and on one hand loses control over what is captured by his camera, he fails to deliver whatever goods he planned to.
Yet, on the other hand, he miraculously tells, by his failure to fulfill his mission and document what he was after, that very story, though in a totally different way from what he planned and without being aware of it at all. He goes out to document August and whatever is so horrible about August, yet he himself becomes August.
At the same time, in his home, his wife is taken in captivity by the producer of another film this filmmaker is engaged with a film concerning the massacre of tens of Moslem prayers by an Israeli physician in the cave of Machpela in the occupied town of Hebron in 1994.
All three characters, the filmmaker, the filmmaker's wife and the producer, are played by one person, the director of the film, Avi Mograbi. August depicts a portrait of the state of Israel. Unlike past portraits of Israel this is not based on the exposure of the ideological forces, the political and bilateral conflicts or the historical complexity. It is a portrait of the nature and character and personality of this country and of the people that lives in it.
A portrait of constant anger, of bitterness, of suspicion. The feeling that haunts the film is of a place set in motion by a turbulence of anger and rage. A feeling that every man has an enemy, and that at every given moment the person next to you could be that enemy, and that there is no better moment than this moment to expose the potential of dispute between the two of you.