FORGOTTENATION / ERETZ NESHIYA-Portrait Of A Serial Rapist

The first thing the audience member sees is a trigger warning, alerting the viewer to the film’s traumatizing content, and it is films such as ForgotteNation for which trigger warnings were made. A brutal found-footage film that follows the project of Roee Tsezrik (Hillel Cappon), a serial rapist who records his rapes, this film is brutal, violent and difficult to watch and I cannot imagine anyone who has been traumatized by sexual assault in their lives wanting to watch it for a second. The warning then cuts immediately to a close-up of the graphic rape of a woman by a smiling Roee. From the first frame this film says it is neither about entertainment nor viewing pleasure, although I’m not entirely certain what the purpose of the film is.

ForgotteNation, however, offers mysteries that make it more than a serial rapist version of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, which it resembles. First, the film is narrated by Eva, who is both former victim of Roee and future victim. She recognizes him and attempts to lure him to attempt to rape her again. She is a member of Femmex, an anonymous group of women who carry knives and ritually “correct” rapists by castrating and killing them. She manages to knock him out and tie him up, but he escapes his bonds before she can correct him, and he kills her. Yet she continues to narrate the film. So is the entire film the narrative of a ghost?

Second, who is the camera person? Roee is not recording himself, the camera moves while he is sexually assaulting his victims and he speaks to the person holding the camera, not the camera itself, even in the most intimate moments of his life. Who is the unnamed, never seen or heard from camera operator and why is this person involved. With both of these the film may be speaking about how we perceive and frame our mediated existences. Roee, after all, escalates his project because he posts his videos on the dark web and grows upset and angry when they do not get a lot of “likes” or people comment that they are all “boring.” Roee sees himself as a hero and an entertainer and cannot understand why his work is not appreciated. He is, in the words of Eva, “a pathetic man playing at being a predator.” He is good looking, can be charming and attractive to women, but there is also something of the incel about him. Women are things to be used for entertainment. And they owe him that.

Set in a dystopian Israel of the not-too-distant-future, the film simply follows Roee’s life and “project.” His only friend is Kiril (Kye Korabelnikov), an adult man on the autism spectrum with savant syndrome – he is a computer genius who helps Roee with his website and removing ransomware in less than a minute. Roee has genuine affection for him, but he also manipulates Kiril and pushes him away whenever his friend is inconvenient. Roee befriends Simkhit (Rinat Matatov), a neighbor who wears a mask because her body was burned after a sexual assault by people she thought were her friends. Roee prevents her from killing herself, but is motivated because he wants to put a film of himself raping her on the darkweb, figuring a burn victim in a mask will get likes for “novelty.”

There is much in ForgotteNation to recommend, particularly the performances – Capon, Korabelsakov, Matatov, and Noa Har Zion are excellent. Capon especially makes Roee a complex, at times even sympathetic human being, although one never forgets who and what he is. Perhaps that is my biggest problem with this film – why am I watching this man do what he does? Surely not because I empathize with this “hero.” The only reason can be to see him get his comeuppance, but what will happen to him to make the spectacle we have just sat through of all those women graphically brutalized worth it? The movie is well shot and well made, but why was it made is still a mystery to me. Take the warning at the beginning of ForgotteNation seriously. This is not an easy watch.