reen Mountain Stables provides the initial backdrop for this short documentary. The opening moments dwell on the serenity of horses casually loping around and relaxing in the sunlight, before deviating quite sharply to commentary reminiscing on the past. An unseen (and unheard) narrator mentions that they were only twelve years old when the barrier was built between Israel and the West Bank – a topic that was, and is, heavily politicized – as reported on the former Channel 22 on June 16th, 2003.

Shuafat refugee camp provides the following backdrop, transitioning to shots of overpopulated buildings and barbwire fences, though a lone horse trotting in circles on a dirt lot can be seen from afar, as if it’s the lone remnant of a freer, more natural past. Cars drive by, but the horse is undeterred in its confined movements. Supplementing the stark views of Jerusalem and surrounding areas are what appears to be AI-generated sequences of various cavalry units marching or riding in slow motion, spanning the decades from the Hebrew Cavalry of the ‘40s to the units of the IDF and the modern Israeli police.

Strangely, the AI imagery is poor; it possesses that very obvious, alien-like, otherworldly morphing, where faces and bodies mutate, and limbs change shapes and lengths or thrash about. It’s uncanny and weird, never once convincing of a precise realism, regardless of the black-and-white or desaturated colors. One could argue that it’s artistic, but with this subject matter, it hardly seems necessary to bring this kind of experimentation into the fold.

As the ideas transition from the West Bank controversies to the diminishing of horse breed varieties (from Hanoverians to now only Friesians) to the ethics of training with a whip (and what other potentially cruel methods must have been utilized to subjugate the animals into obeying), apparently tiptoeing around every analogous issue, “The Cavalry” can’t seem to figure out what it wants to say. Is it actually concerned with equine mammals? Is it suggesting that the people trapped in the chaos and confusion of the Middle East are akin to those creatures, undergoing the same mistreatment and decline in freedoms? By the end, it remains unclear, since the population and the horses are never shown in any meaningful juxtaposition (nor is the director, whose femaleness amid the male Israeli police could have presented an interesting unease by itself). And even the ambiguity, purposeful or not, lacks engagement, resulting in a seemingly pointless yet thankfully ephemeral examination of a topic so narrow and imprecise and undramatic that it may never find an audience.

– Mike Massie