june zero movie review

There’s no shortage of films that consider the Holocaust or Israel’s founding. But it’s rare to see the two subjects intertwined so purposely as in “June Zero.” The idea to fold it all into an anthology of interconnected short films might be unique. 

“June Zero” is directed by an American filmmaker,  Jake Paltrow (brother of actress Gwyneth and son of esteemed TV director Bruce Paltrow ). It was conceived partly as a testament to his family’s (partial) Polish Jewish heritage. The screenplay, by Paltrow and Israeli writer-director Tom Shoval , is set in the early 1960s. It’s organized around the trial and eventual execution of Adolph Eichmann, a key architect of the Holocaust who had fled to Argentina but was captured and brought to Israel in an incident that sparked arguments about international sovereignty and whether it was ever appropriate to violate it. The dialogue is mainly in subtitled Hebrew, save for an interlude where Polish and English are spoken. It’s fragmented by nature—a work of impressionistic moments in which intellectual and philosophical ideas are considered, and powerful emotions summoned and then allowed to dissipate. 

The opening story is about a young boy, an Israeli Jew, who goes to work in a factory, where he participates in the construction and cleaning of an oven for cremation. Eichmann is the one who’ll be put in it. The cremation of Eichmann is a topic of heated debate within the film. There are lines that suggest that some Israelis would gladly burn him alive if given the chance, as Old Testament retribution for what happened at places like Auschwitz. Cremation advocates also warn that having an Eichmann gravesite in Israel would encourage the wrong sorts of tourism. There are also Israelis who are uncomfortable with the eye-for-a-eye implications of incinerating a Nazi’s corpse, as well as with flouting the Talmud’s instruction that bodies be buried.  

The most thoughtful and emotionally involving parts of “June Zero” focus on a prison guard named Haim ( Yoav Levi ), a Moroccan Jew who’s put in charge of guarding Eichmann. As explained in the movie, Israeli authorities decided that European Jews would not be allowed near Eichmann for fear they might decide to short-circuit the legal process; only Mizrahi Jews, i.e., Jews from the predominantly Muslim world, were allowed. Haim is living on a tightrope. The local press (including a reporter who seems to be a friend) craves insider reports on what’s happening in Eichmann’s cell block. A minor car crash injures Haim–not badly enough to prevent him from carrying out his duties, but just enough that he can’t completely trust the evidence of his senses, so you wonder if he’s right to be paranoid that the barber assigned to cut Eichmann’s hair will try to kill him with the scissors. 

Another episode focuses on Micha (Thom Hagy), an investigator for the prosecution in Eichmann’s trial. Although he’s featured in an episode in the middle section, the movie follows him later for his own episode set in Poland, where he’s lecturing on the necessity of the existence of Israel, tying it mainly to the Holocaust.  A representative of the Israeli commission ( Joy Rieger ) who hosts him also takes issue with his focus. This leads to a long discussion in a restaurant/bar that touches on still-sensitive topics, including the question of whether tying Jewish identity so specifically to the Holocaust is reductive and damaging in the long term (“Must never forget become only remember ?”). Because there’s such strong chemistry between the two actors (and their characters), the episode seems as if it’s going to turn into a darker and more politically incendiary cousin of the “Before” films with Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke . It wisely it ends on a note that makes them seem more like representatives of certain worldviews, locked in an ideological dance.

Paltrow’s direction mostly errs on the side of naturalism—i.e., seeming to let the characters go wherever they’d go and move however they’d move in real life, rather than blocking everyone and everything to make attractive shots—and this feels like the right approach given the inherent instability of the subject. The first episode especially has a caught-on-the-fly feeling reminiscent of classic 1990s Iranian movies like “ Children of Heaven ” and “The Mirror.” One of the strangest, most magical things about movies is that a story like this one, in which an anxious-to-please but emotionally immature child makes a series of impulsive, bad decisions, can feel more suspenseful than a big-budget Hollywood action film about commandos trying to defuse a nuclear bomb. 

The only part of the story that partly abandons naturalism focuses on Eichmann himself, who is presented like a president in a  Doonesbury cartoon or George Steinbrenner on “Seinfeld”: we hear the character speak and get closeups of feet and legs and arms and hands, plus close-ups and head-to-toe shots filmed from the back, but there are no face shots. I’m guessing the intent was to maintain Eichmann as a storytelling device or “issue” while making sure that he didn’t become the main character in a film about the people his former government mass-murdered (the obscured shots also prevent us from judging whether the actor looks like Eichmann, potentially an additional distraction). Regardless, it took me out of the movie at a time when I was dialed in thanks to the script’s satirical tone (verging on “Death of Stalin” or “ Dr. Strangelove ” at times) as well as Levi’s superb performance as the guard. But I don’t know if there was a better way to handle this aspect of the material, short of not showing Eichmann at all.

Parts of “June Zero” are more effective than others. There are stretches where the “food for thought” aspect takes over the dramaturgy, and the movie starts to feel like an educational film. But such is the nature of the exercise. “June Zero” chose a difficult path and then walked it. It’s certainly not like anything else you’ve seen on this topic, and worth a look for that reason—also because the mostly-handheld 16mm film cinematography (by  Yaron Scharf ) feels out-of-time, almost as if you’re watching a lost art-house movie from thirty years ago. It respects the viewer’s intelligence. It’s trying for something. 

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor-at-Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

• Tzahi Grad as Shlomi Zebco
• Yoav Levi as Haim Amzaleg
• Tom Hagi as Micha Aaronson
• Joy Rieger as Ada
• Ami Smolarchik as Yanek Hercz
• Jake Paltrow

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Review: In ‘June Zero,’ There Are Many Ways to See the Past

Jake Paltrow’s film braids three fictional stories around the 1962 execution of Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi official and war criminal.

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By Nicolas Rapold

In 1960, Israeli agents smuggled the Nazi official Adolf Eichmann from Buenos Aires to Jerusalem to stand trial for his role in the Holocaust. Rather than focus on the operation, or on Eichmann’s notorious defense , “June Zero” thoughtfully braids three stories that relate to the events around Eichmann’s execution by hanging in 1962.

Jake Paltrow’s film, which premiered at festivals in 2022, might sound like an exercise in hagiography: Drawing on actual accounts, it’s framed by the tale of David, a plucky Israeli teenager who finds himself involved in Eichmann’s fate. But the shifting story, written by Paltrow and Tom Shoval, complicates the act of commemoration and dwells on the moral quandaries and uncomfortable resonances that result from the events.

David (Noam Ovadia, a nervy newcomer) is pushed to work in a factory after trouble in school. His boss, Shlomi (Tzahi Grad), a brutal former soldier, is secretly custom-building an oven for the government to cremate Eichmann’s remains, and their plan is played in the movie for unease as much as for suspense.

At the same time, Eichmann’s guard in jail, Haim (Yoav Levi), nearly goes mad from his assignment to protect the Nazi. The spotlight then leaps to Poland, where a tour guide (Tom Hagi), a Holocaust survivor, spars with the trip organizer (Joy Rieger), weighing the necessary rituals of remembrance against the risks of being trapped by the past.

Concluding with David’s role in Eichmann’s disposal, “June Zero” sticks to its characters’ specific experiences of these events. But the resourceful narrative, with some surprising grace notes, tends to invite questioning and reflection.

June Zero Not rated. In Hebrew and Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters.

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‘June Zero’ Review: Jake Paltrow Reexamines Adolf Eichmann’s Execution in Thoughtful Israeli Drama

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The capture, trial, and execution of Adolf Eichmann is a profound moment for the processing of historical trauma . One of the architects of the Holocaust , the Nazi leader was so driven by hate and a murderous desire to exterminate the Jewish people that a fellow Nazi testified at the Nuremberg Trials that Eichmann once said if he should die he would “leap laughing into the grave because the feeling that he had five million people on his conscience would be for him a source of extraordinary satisfaction.”

“June Zero” presents three stories and then shows where they intersect: There’s the 13-year-old Arab Jew named David (Noam Ovadia), forced alongside his family to flee Libya because of his religion but obviously not accepted as fully Israeli by many people around him in his new country. With his father, he primarily speaks Arabic, and when he gets a job with a machinist, Shlomi (Tzahi Grad), someone says threateningly to him that his new boss has killed a lot of Arabs. But David and his employer seem to hit it off, even as David steals and breaks the old man’s pocket watch. Does Shlomi really have affection for this boy, or does he just need a skinny kid to help him build his next project: A large crematory oven, one that needs to be assembled in secret.

The second story is about Eichmann’s prison guard, Haim (Yoav Levi), a Moroccan Jew who takes pains to make sure his charge is unharmed and delivered to the hangman’s noose in as good a shape as possible. It’s been decreed that no one around Eichmann should be European Jews with a connection to the Holocaust — the fear being that one of them may just try to kill the Nazi themselves, thus showing that due process wasn’t, or couldn’t be, achieved. Some of Paltrow’s best, most precise filmmaking occurs during this sequence, in which Haim is suspicious of a new barber who arrives to cut Eichmann’s hair. Haim observes ever single movement of the man’s scissors and orders each cut. Paltrow cuts between closeups of Haim’s face, deeply intent on watching what this barber’s up to, and the barber’s fingers. Finally, Haim even thinks he’s spotted tattooed numbers on the barber’s arm, indicating that he was in fact a Holocaust survivor. But of course, it’s a hallucination. “He’s not your prisoner, you’re all his prisoners!,” the barber shouts as he’s hurried away.

Things are more nuanced than they initially appear: That’s much of the history of Israel over the past 75 years, despite the loudest voices dominating the discourse. And that is the essential argument of “June Zero.” If the film is more effective at telegraphing that argument at some moments than others — if like any quasi-anthology film, some parts are going to be better than others — it’s a worthwhile message to convey nonetheless. Paltrow, indeed the younger brother of Gwyneth and the previous director of “The Good Night” and “De Palma,” proves himself capable of questioning absolutes — especially through the character of David, whose Jewishness appears to be called into question in Israel because of his Arab ancestors. He handles the material he co-wrote with Tom Shoval, all fictional but rooted in deep truths, with sensitivity and consideration. For its producer Oren Moverman, this is another searching, thoughtful film about trauma and its aftermath, much like the helpline drama “The Listener” starring Tessa Thompson he produced that released earlier this year.

“June Zero” is a Cohen Media Group release and is in theaters now.

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‘June Zero’ Review: Jake Paltrow’s Frustratingly Split-Focus Hebrew-Language Eichmann Execution Drama

The sincere but oddly inconsequential tale of three characters involved to differing degrees in Adolf Eichmann's 1962 execution.

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However many books and movies take it as their subject, a historical travesty on the incomprehensible scale of the Holocaust must always contain within it an uncountable number of untold stories. Given this wealth of untapped dramatic potential, it’s all the more perplexing that American director Jake Paltrow should choose to refer to his family’s Jewish heritage (the Paltrows have Belarusian and Polish Jewish ancestry) with “ June Zero ,” a polished, well-performed but thinly stretched attempt to communicate the seismic impact of Adolf Eichmann’s 1962 execution on Israeli society. Though it occasionally brushes up against intricate ideas about memory and memorialization — who gets to be commemorated, who must not and the genesis of the “never forget” ethos — “June Zero” itself leaves a quickly fading impression.

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The film’s status as an Israeli prestige project is signaled by the involvement of the Israeli Ministry For Culture and Sport and the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, among other institutions whose logos unfurl before the opening credits like a particularly long PowerPoint presentation. This suggests the film’s chief future purpose may be as an educational tool for generations at an increasing remove from this foundational episode in the nation’s evolution. Its earnest intentions are not in question. Instead, the issue is one of focus, with Paltrow, who co-wrote the Hebrew-language screenplay with Israeli writer-director Tom Shoval, electing to split the film’s attention unequally three ways.

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The storyline following Haim (Yoav Levi), Eichmann’s guard during his trial, sentencing and, finally, his unheralded hanging (on a day designated “June Zero” by a local tabloid to avoid the possibility of it becoming a notable anniversary) is rife with illuminating detail. Scrupulously polite and correct in his dealings with Eichmann (whom we only ever glimpse partially, in one of the film’s best-achieved formal flourishes), the Moroccan Haim is mostly tasked with ensuring that none of the few people who have contact with his prisoner has a direct connection to the Holocaust: It is his job to maintain vigilance against vigilantism. When a new barber arrives to give Eichmann his final haircut, Haim insists on vetting every snip of the scissors — a tense scene only undercut by the unnecessary added twist of a possible concussion from a recent car accident causing Haim to hallucinate perils where none exist.

Then there’s Micha (a soulful Tom Hagy), an investigator for the prosecution in Eichmann’s trial, whose incongruous, almost self-contained storyline is the only section of the film not set in Israel. Micha is part of a delegation to Poland, where he visits the ghetto in which he experienced torture and humiliation prior to being shipped to a camp. (These scenes were actually shot in Ukraine, which gives them an unforeseen sad relevance.) The conversations he has here, with the attractive, somewhat combative representative of the Israeli commission (Joy Rieger) are didactic but fascinating, touching on thorny issues, such as when it is that Holocaust memorialization crosses the line into mere tourism, and just how much the survivors of Nazi atrocity owe it to history to relitigate their trauma over and over again. “Must ‘never forget’ become ‘only remember’?” the Israeli rep asks him, and Micha’s eloquent, agonized response, beautifully delivered by Hagy, is a small essay in Holocaust historiography all by itself.

But neither of these two men is the main character in “June Zero,” which instead is framed and given its forward momentum by 13-year-old rapscallion David (engaging newcomer Noam Ovadia), a Libyan immigrant who, partly as punishment for bad behavior at school, is sent to work at a factory that manufactures industrial ovens for bakeries. When his vaguely gangsterish boss gets the commission from Haim to build the one-off crematorium that will be used to dispose of Eichmann’s body (cremation is forbidden in Jewish tradition, so no such devices exist in the country), David proves an endlessly resourceful and useful asset to the project. Again, there are nicely observed details here, from David’s touchy truculence in the face of racism, to the horrible irony of Jewish factory workers building an oven to the same spec as the German death camp crematoria.

But although DP Yaron Scharf’s warmly saturated 16mm photography gives a rich, antique texture to the visuals across all three storylines, it simply can’t be ignored that the capers and mini-heists of David’s arc lack the gravity of Haim’s or Micha’s narratives, and his connection to Eichmann’s execution is tangential at best. In their different ways, both Haim and Micha can be seen as contending with the central paradox of the whole Eichmann trial phenomenon — one most famously summed up by Hannah Arendt when she coined the phrase “the banality of evil.” Both men have to work out how to live their ordinary, everyday lives in close proximity to inconceivably colossal cruelty. Haim has to keep this reviled man alive and healthy in order that he might be killed in accordance with the law. Micha must decide if the work of commemorating those who lost their lives to the barbarism of men like Eichmann is worth the sacrifice of the rest of his.

But framing such weighty and provocative ideas within David’s story is a strange misstep. When this occasionally insightful movie ends with an epilogue about, of all things, an argument over Wikipedia attribution, it cannot but feel trivial compared to the momentous nature of this extraordinary moment in history, relegating “June Zero,” at best, to the status of a footnote.

Reviewed at Karlovy Vary Film Festival (Special Screenings), July 3, 2022. Running time: 106 MIN.

• Production: (U.S.-Israel) A Metro Communications, Cold Iron Pictures, The Film Arcade production in co-production with United King Films. (World sales: Films Boutique, Berlin.) Producers: David Silber, Miranda Bailey, Oren Moverman.
• Crew: Director: Jake Paltrow. Screenplay: Jake Paltrow, Tom Shoval. Camera: Yaron Scharf. Editor: Ayelet Gil-Efrat. Music: Ariel Marx.
• With: Noam Ovadia, Tzahi Grad, Yoav Levi, Tom Hagi, Joy Rieger, Ami Smolarchik, Rotem Kainan, Adam Gabai, Koby Aderet. (Hebrew, Arabic dialogue)

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‘june zero’ review: jake paltrow’s stirring meditation on the cycle of state violence.

The film ponders what it means to have the power to distort and weaponize collective memory.

In the 1963 book that largely came to define her career, Eichmann in Jerusalem , historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt surmised that “the trouble with [Adolf] Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal.” The year was 1961, and the state of Israel was very publicly trying Eichmann for his architectural hand in the Holocaust.

Arendt had begun covering the controversial spectacle for The New Yorker before it ballooned into a larger project. With Eichmann in Jerusalem , she, among other things, coined the term “the banality of evil,” as well as suggested that the court case against Eichmann was an exercise in theatrics. A frequent critic of early Zionism, Arendt wondered for whom the trial was for, and questioned its necessity. With June Zero , director and co-writer Jake Paltrow, offers his own possible retort: that even if historical memory is malleable, shaped and molded by the people privileged enough to wield it, it still must be passed on to subsequent generations.

June Zero is a triptych of stories surrounding Jews on the outskirts of early Israeli society. It’s a film that provides viewers with provocative questions about the prickly morality of Eichmann’s extradition and execution (the former illegal under international law and the latter the first in the nation’s history), as much about its country’s own founding, wondering if a land built partly on retribution is at risk of falling under its own traumatic anger. Like Steven Spielberg’s Munich before it, June Zero is a stirring meditation on the cycle of state violence.

The film, shot entirely on 16mm, begins by following David (Koby Aderet), a precocious Libyan-Israeli child whose identity as an Arab and Sephardic Jew immediately places him on the fringes. Soon after being caught stealing candy from a local store, David’s father finds him a job at a power plant run by Shlomi Zebco (Tzahi Grad), a former soldier for the violent Zionist paramilitary outfit Etzel. Zebco’s past exploits are hinted at by employees and soldiers who suggest he took particular pleasure in murdering Arabs. Regardless, he quickly becomes a mentor to the impressionable David, who ingratiates himself well into Zebco’s team by becoming a tiny muscle man to his boss and through his ability to squeeze into tight spaces.

The relationship seems to teach David that vengeance is righteous if doled out against the proper victims, a philosophy that extends to Zebco’s angling for the contract to build the crematorium that will eventually burn Eichmann’s body. The team raises the alarm when they realize they’re working off blueprints similar to the ones that the Nazis used to build their crematoriums. It’s a plot point, too, that recalls Zionist collaboration with the Nazis before and during the Holocaust, a historical footnote that Arendt herself frequently criticized.

Zebco’s team earns the hairy job through Hayim (Yoav Levi), the Moroccan-born guard assigned to Eichmann’s jail to protect him as he awaited certain death. Because the Holocaust targeted mostly Ashkenazi Jews, only Sephardic Jews were allowed to watch over Eichmann during his holding, and June Zero shows this strange racial dynamic via Hayim, who’s plagued as much by a toothache and a burst blood vessel in his eye as he is by his conscience.

The two speak in Spanish, their one common language, creating an unnerving intimacy between them that ultimately results in Eichmann tenderly asking his bodyguard to hand-deliver his last letter to his wife. Paltrow builds tension well, particularly during a scene in which Hayim paranoiacally polices a Tunisian barber’s (Assi Itzhaki) cutting of Eichmann’s hair, highlighting Hayim’s anxious position of being close to a man who was largely responsible for the mass murder of his countrymen. In a particularly inspired choice, Eichmann is shot exclusively from behind and in extreme close-ups of his hands and the back of his head, cementing the notion that this Nazi leader was extraordinarily human yet ultimately unknowable.

The film’s third segment jarringly changes locales to Poland, where Micha (Tom Hagi) is leading one of the first-ever tour groups of the former ghettos, along with the help of Ada (Joy Rieger), an expat representative for the Jewish Agency for Israel. After Micha, a Polish survivor of Auschwitz, tells a story to the group about being whipped as a kid on the streets, Ada sneaks him into a local bar to plead with him about the potential of capitalistic exploitation of grief. She warns him that her company wants to parade him around like a “circus animal.” Speaking almost directly to the camera, Ada argues, “If we invest ourselves in this pain, we’ll become the biggest ghetto ever built, but this time we’ll have walled ourselves in.” (Considering the film’s release during Israel’s ongoing operations in Gaza, the scene is unnervingly prescient.)

Micha responds to Ada’s charge by asserting that he’s a “fossil,” a living memory, for his existence concretizes the memory of the Holocaust. The film suggests that the existence of Israel as a state does the same, but rather than proffer a single answer to the Zionist question, Paltrow and co-writer Tom Shoval give credence to multiple perspectives from the diaspora. While certainly not an anti-Zionist film, June Zero at least allows space to consider both the assimilationist who believes in a future of Jewry beyond trauma and nationalism alongside the Zionist who insists on the presence of Israel as a necessary aspect of Jewish survivalism.

Ada’s perception that Israel is in danger of indulging in the pain of the past to “justify the present” elicits Micha’s counter that memory never remains in the past. Micha is based on Michael Goldman-Gilad, who took depositions for the Eichmann trial as a personal aide to Gideon Hausner, and his place in history is secure. By contrast, so many others in the film long to be acknowledged for their own mark in that history, however brutal the mark may be.

June Zero is a tender, if sometimes cynical, portrait of a new country on old land struggling through the growing pains of establishing its presence both to the international community and its own people. While the film doesn’t include depictions of Palestinian life, nor does it acknowledge the public debate surrounding Palestinians in the 1960s, it does dramatize anti-Arab racism and a cycle of retribution that recalls Audre Lorde’s assertion that “the master’s tool will never dismantle the master’s house…they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.” With June Zero , the filmmakers also wonder what good it is to use these tools if they have the power to distort and weaponize our collective memory.

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Greg Nussen is a Los Angeles-based critic and programmer, with words in Salon , Bright Lights Film Journal , Vague Visages , Knock-LA , and elsewhere.

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A film that examines Adolf Eichmann's trial, capturing the empathy and humanism amidst the atrocities committed during WWII. A film that examines Adolf Eichmann's trial, capturing the empathy and humanism amidst the atrocities committed during WWII. A film that examines Adolf Eichmann's trial, capturing the empathy and humanism amidst the atrocities committed during WWII.

• Jake Paltrow
• Koby Aderet
• 4 User reviews
• 17 Critic reviews
• 65 Metascore
• 2 nominations

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• Shlomi Zebco

• David Saada

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• May 2, 2024 (Israel)
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• Jun 30, 2024

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• Runtime 1 hour 45 minutes

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June Zero Reviews

While it is undoubtedly narratively flawed, June Zero is a fascinating film for the questions and issues it evokes, and the way Jake Paltrow decides to deal with them on screen.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 14, 2024

When all is said and done, June Zero portrays a historic period in Israel in a way that's different from the history books.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 14, 2024

June Zero is an unusual film based on an interesting idea that it doesn’t quite know how to carry out.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Aug 13, 2024

Paltrow's movie unsettles, never shrinking from complexity as it details how a major trial impacted the lives of ordinary Israelis.

Full Review | Jul 18, 2024

Finding an approach that dares to be different, June Zero makes a worthy entrance into the realm of Holocaust related films.

Full Review | Jul 15, 2024

Paltrow deserves credit for coming up with an original idea: using Eichmann as an entry point to focus on ordinary people in extraordinary times, hash out the intersectional identities of each character and unofficially layout the inherent complications

Full Review | Jul 14, 2024

The parts are more impactful than the whole... It doesn't completely lend itself to coherence, but there are elements that are very potent.

Full Review | Jul 13, 2024

I found this enjoyable but kind of grim.

The parts don’t quite cohere, but they resonate, and it makes you think.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 12, 2024

It is a challenging and provoking look at how the fabric of history is woven, with monumental events shaped by ordinary people. It’s difficult not to appreciate Paltrow’s choice to take the road less taken in his film of weighty ethical considerations.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 11, 2024

All of these stories are about the contradictions inherent in being alive and how we can simultaneously be a part of something and separate from it.

Full Review | Jul 10, 2024

This is a good movie, objectively. The shots are creative, the actors talented, the story heavy. ... Director Jake Paltrow ... chose to make this beautiful movie now. Never again, and yet.

Full Review | Jul 8, 2024

'June Zero' has value and shares unique perspectives.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 8, 2024

The issues in this powerful film are complex, but for those involved, the answers are as clear as they are different.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 6, 2024

A thoughtful, multilayered movie about the myriad actions leading up to and ending with Albert Eichmann’s execution and the disposal of his body between May 31 and June 1, 1962. Just when you think it’s one thing, it becomes something else.

Full Review | Jul 5, 2024

There’s a bit of vengeful comedy when the cinematographer Yaron Scharf introduces Eichmann feet first on the toilet over the sounds of Beethoven’s “Pathétique.”

This collapse in focus and desire to abandon course mid-stream sinks Paltrow’s film so much that one wishes June Zero had been a series of stand alone shorts rather than a single feature. When strung together, it just doesn’t work.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Jul 5, 2024

Though each of the plotlines in “June Zero” stir up ethical questions, its primary approach is to look at people living their lives while an extraordinary event comes to its climax. That leaves the movie open to multiple, marvelous interpretations...

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 3, 2024

An uneven three-part structure weakens the impact of Jake Paltrow’s portrait of Israel during the epochal 1961 trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Jul 2, 2024

June Zero sheds light on how retribution was sought in one of the largest injustices in human history, framing the story around a young boy whose life became entangled in history.

Full Review | Jul 2, 2024