Operation Thunderbolt

Operation Thunderbolt (1977)

מבצע יונתן

In July 1976, an Air France flight from Tel-Aviv to Paris via Athens was hijacked and forced to land in Entebbe, Uganda. The Jewish passengers were separated and held hostage in demand to release many terrorists held in Israeli prisons. After much debate, the Israeli government sent an elite commando unit to raid the airfield and release the hostages.

Date of release
1977-06-06
TMDB
6.1 / 10 (20)
Runtime
2h 4m
Genres
Action, Drama, Thriller
Director
Menahem Golan

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Awards: 0 · Nominations: 2

Operation Thunderbolt, known in Israel as Mivtza Yonatan, also called Entebbe: Operation Thunderbolt in the US, is a 1977 Israeli film directed and co-written by Menahem Golan and starring Klaus Kinski, Yehoram Gaon and Sybil Danning. The film is based on an actual event – the hijacking of a flight by terrorists and the freeing of Israeli hostages on July 4, 1976 at Entebbe Airport in Uganda. The Entebbe raid was known as Operation Entebbe or Operation Thunderbolt. Operation Thunderbolt follows the events following the flight's takeoff until the hostages' return to Israel. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Production

Pre-production on a Hollywood film began shortly after the actual raid had taken place. With a projected large budget, and efforts to land Steve McQueen in a leading role, the project collapsed. At that point, Menahem Golan as director and co-producer, Yoram Globus also as co-producer and Ken Globus as screenwriter, took over the aborted project.

The Golan/Globus team made a decision to achieve a near-documentary feel to the proposed film. Utilizing a full-scale outdoor set consisting of control tower and terminal, the recreated Entebbe Airport also had a collection of realistic scale models of the Ugandan Air Force MiG-17 and MiG-21 fighters. Three of the four Hercules transports that were flown in the raid are seen in the film.

Operation Thunderbolt was produced with the co-operation of the Israeli Air Force and the Israeli government. The film features original footage of prominent politicians such as Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Yigal Allon, although scenes with Peres being briefed by Yonatan Netanyahu's team and a hostage's father talking to Rabin feature a stand-in whose face is not seen. The exterior scenes set in Uganda were photographed near Eilat, Israel.

Originally filmed with all characters speaking in Hebrew, French, German, Arabic, or English per role, Operation Thunderbolt was shot a second time concurrently in an all-English version for the international market. With permission from the Globus Group, a number of documentaries on the rescue use footage from the film, alongside dramatizations of the events.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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