With a din of war documentaries constantly circling around our heads, it is easy to focus solely on the woes of a singular nation, namely our own, as opposed to the forrest of warring factions slightly out of our periphery. As a welcomed respite from talking heads and political pundits, tonight the Austin Film Society presents Beaufort, a film about what happens when there truly is nothing left to fight for, which will be the final offering in their second series of AFS Essentials entitled Children of Abraham/Ibrahim: Middle East and North Africa.

Beaufort, an Academy Award nominated narrative, follows the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Southern Lebanon, 18 years after the occupation began. As opposed to rooting out terrorists and massively destructive (and nonexistent) weapons, the Israelis had come to Lebanon in 1982 to secure their purported birthright—the land of their forefathers, or, the Abraham side of the coin—and did so by bombing the hell out of Beirut and anything else they could hit, forcing their mortal enemies, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, to retreat. Granted, Lebanon was not necessarily the land of Abraham, but since the PLO was camped out and had attempted to assassinate the Israeli ambassador to the UK, we suppose Israel figured that whatever place Palestinians chose to inhabit was fair game for bloodshed. Clearly, we are oversimplifying this and depending on which side of the strip you stand on, the view may be very different.

After capturing a swath of land that included the crusader Beaufort fortress, the Israeli forces proceeded to make this symbol of strength and control their own. When it is decided that this castle-on-a-hill is not the stronghold that it once was, the Israeli soldiers must deal with a jarring existential crisis: the realization that they have been risking their lives to save something that no longer has any worth, a place that is to be demolished and left in ashes. This is where we first meet the soldiers in the film, and where we wait with them, and wait, and wait, through the tense and uncomfortable process of retreat.

Of course, hindsight is always 20/20, but we often wonder why that vision is never transitioned into foresight. When it comes to bandying about with the lives of human beings, it seems that any dispute would eventually carry the overwhelming disillusionment of purposelessness, but somehow the record is scratched and continues to skip, history repeating its repeat. What exactly are we fighting for again?