VENICE, Italy (AP) — Israeli director Samuel Maoz won the Venice Film Festival's top prize eight years ago with his first feature film, "Lebanon."

Now he's back with "Foxtrot," a critical hit that could win him his second Golden Lion.

The film, which has its world premiere at the Italian festival on Saturday, opens with an affluent Tel Aviv couple being informed that their soldier son has died in the line of duty.

The parents are floored by grief, but the film has more shocks in store for them as it explores the way trauma scars individuals and societies, and ripples across generations.

Maoz says the film is a study of fate, like a Greek tragedy in which the hero "is unaware of the outcome that his actions will bring about."