If you’re looking for easy metaphors, Foxtrot helpfully explains the one in its title during a scene between a pair of grieving parents. Michael (Lior Ashkenazi) demonstrates to his younger wife Dafna (Sarah Adler) the dance’s simple, repetitive steps, first separating and then bringing his feet back together. “No matter where you go,” he says, “you always end up at the same starting point.”
The film, too, has a circular nature: The first and third sections in its three-act format echo each other in their near-claustrophobic focus on Michael and Dafna as they process the news that their soldier son, Jonathan (Yonatan Shiray), has been killed in action. Forget the blatant box-step metaphor, though: Israeli writer/director Samuel Maoz does not bring us back to our starting point. Foxtrot is an extraordinary experience, full of sadness, humor, banality, and beauty, and you will likely come out of it changed, or at least moved.