A Roots Trip to Poland Delivers More than One Might have Expected

The Property (הנכס), billed as a film by the Modan sisters -- a debut film by Dana Modan, based on the graphic novel (published in 2013) by her sister, Rutu Modan -- is currently playing in movie theaters in Israel.

This is a charming film about modern-day Israeli Jews and their relationship to contemporary Poland and Poles.  The story revolves around two women – an aging grandmother, Regina, memorably played by the famous veteran actress Rivka Michaeli, and her granddaughter, Mika – who make a trip to Warsaw.  (The film is almost entirely shot abroad, either in Poland or in Georgia.)

Back in the 1930s, Regina, then a 15-year-old pregnant girl, was forced by her parents to quickly marry a Jewish boy and leave Warsaw for Palestine. Obviously, this saved her life.  Now, for the first time, she is returning to Poland, not so much to confront or explore her Polish roots, but rather to seek out the local boy who was her lover so long ago. 

The story revolves around a family apartment where Regina and her family lived, before the war.  Today, she discovers, the apartment functions as a small restaurant. But among the tables and chairs, Regina finds much more than she anticipated.  Meanwhile, Mika is tracking down a lawyer who might be able to help them in their attempt to regain possession of the apartment.  Along the way, she is befriended by a non-Jewish tour-guide who specializes in tours of the Ghetto. 

There are plentiful references to the Holocaust, but there are no scenes of terrible trauma.  The Holocaust references are contemporary ones – the Israeli high school kids who are so poorly behaved on the airplane on their way to Poland where they will visit lots of concentration camps; issues of how post-war Poland deals with properties that belonged to Jews; and maybe the best scene of all – a non-Jewish woman whose work entails rebuilding Jewish and Holocaust memory for tourism who exclaims “I just love the ghetto!”

There are hints of a possible Polish-Jewish Israeli reconciliation—it was possible for a Pole and a Jew to be in love once, it is possible again, and maybe the Polish people and the Jewish people can somehow learn to live together.

The Property is a film that includes a bit of romance, some nostalgia, a lot of humor and an array of quirky characters. It is highly recommended!

  

The Story of the Massacre at the Roadside Shelter on October 7, 2023

The Last Recording (Hebrew title: Death Shelter: The Last Recording), by Assaf Liberman and Nadav Ben Zur, is about a terrible massacre that occurred at a roadside shelter near Kibbutz Re’im on that terrible day, October 7^th, 2023.  A number of young adults in their 20s who had been at the Nova music festival, fleeing for their lives, took refuge in this shelter.  Four were taken hostage by Hamas terrorists and only seven survived. 

Viewers consider yourselves warned -- the film is shocking and difficult to watch.  It is based on a cellphone recording made by Ayelet, who was killed that day.  The sounds, the whisperings, the shooting are all authentic and so hard-hitting.  There is also visual footage of the young people all huddled together, all so very real.  The film includes interviews with the survivors, telling the story of what happened that day, and with the parents of those who were so brutally murdered.  The interviews are conducted, in an extremely sensitive manner, by Assaf Liberman, a radio talk show host for Reshet Bet.

Osama, a Bedouin man from the Negev who was working on the security team for the Nova festival, was trapped in the shelter with the others.  When he stepped out to try to reason with the terrorists, he was grabbed and killed. 

Here is the story that so many people have heard – the terrorists threw grenades into the shelter and Aner, who loved the dancing and was a soldier, bravely kept picking them up and throwing them back out.  He was a true hero.  The footage of the goings-on outside the shelter is from a dashcam, also so very real and authentic. From that footage we can see the grenades exploding outside.  Eventually, the terrorists threw a grenade deep inside and some people, including Aner, were killed.  This is when Hersh Goldberg-Polin lost his hand.  Then the terrorists grabbed four of the people inside and took them away as hostages.  Hersh was one of them (only to be executed later by the terrorists while in captivity).  Also, Alon, who loved to play piano, was taken hostage. 

Finally, the terrorists came back in and shot at everyone, just to be sure. 

The survivors, beautiful young people, today are dealing with the trauma of what they experienced and the fact that they survived. They laid there that day for hours, wounded and traumatized, weeping, waiting for help, waiting to be rescued.

The Last Recording (documentary, 60 minutes) is available from Go2Films. 

The Nova Rave

 I was very badly affected by the latest news.  Yesterday was the day that Shirel Golan committed suicide on her 22^nd birthday.  She was a survivor of the Nova festival and she had been suffering from post trauma. Even though I had been putting off watching the film about the Nova festival, I decided that this was the time to pay proper honor to those who died there and those who survived.

We Will Dance Again, directed by Yariv Mozer, is a highly effective and emotional documentary film which describes the trance festival that took place on Simchat Torah, Friday night, October 6^th, 2023. It portrays an event which was full of energy and full of life.  The festival was produced by a company from Brazil and the DJs came from all over the world. More than 3,500 young people attended in the fields outside of Kibbutz Re’im.  The next morning, October 7^th, about 400 of them were slaughtered by Hamas terrorists.

Some of them were artists, some were models ,others were university students, song writers, production staff. All of them were wonderful young adults who enjoyed dancing, loved to be together and celebrate life!  As the sun rose on the morning of October 7^th, they were hit by an attack of extreme evil, and their lives changed forever.  There were rockets everywhere, explosions, sirens, screaming, barrages of rockets, people running, nobody knowing what was happening.  The footage is comprised entirely of cellphone footage and Hamas body cams and even Hamas propaganda footage.  We watch as the bulldozers broke through the border fence in 60 different locations.

The young people tell stories of how they hid in the portable toilets, in refrigerated equipment, in garbage containers.  They were fleeing through the fields, watching their friends being slaughtered around them, bullets whizzing by, hiding in roadside shelters. 

The stories are so emotional.  In one roadside shelter, a local Bedouin goes out to talk to the terrorists and he is murdered right away.  Hersh Goldberg-Polin is in there with his friend Aner Shapiro.  The terrorists throw in a grenade and Aner picks it up and throws it back.  This happens a few times, until finally a grenade explodes inside. Hersh loses his hand and Aner is killed. We all know the story of Hersh, who is kidnapped and later executed by the Hamas in one of their underground tunnels.

The survivors offer their testimonies against the up-close footage from cellphones of friends being slaughtered around them.  The survivors wonder what was happening to their families, thinking that perhaps the entire country was under siege, watching as their friends were kidnapped.  Hours go by and the police and the army don’t come.  There are burnt out cars and the piles of bodies are mounting up.

This is the story of close to 400 murdered, 44 kidnapped, hundreds wounded, and hundreds living with PTSD. This film provides the victims with individual names.  We hear the story of Shani Louk who was kidnapped and later murdered.  Eliyah Cohen who was taken hostage.  Ron Weinberg who was a tech genius and was killed.  And so many more – David Yair Shalom Newman, Gili, Shaked, Avraham, Uria, Forti, Ruth Peretz and her father Erick, Keshet, Sivan, Maayan, and so many more…

We Will Dance Again (90 minutes, documentary) is an extremely hard-hitting documentary film, which tells a story that needs to be told – a tale of those who were murdered, those who were taken hostage, and those who survived -- not a film for the light-hearted.  The film is available from Go2Films.

Late Summer Blues Director Renen Schorr Creates a Personal Memoir

Wake Up, Grandson – Letters to My Rebellious Rabbi (המעורר) is a documentary film, directed and written by Renen Schorr Heller.  Renen Schorr is well-known in Israel for two major achievements – he directed the iconic 1986 film, Late Summer Blues, and he was the founding director of the Sam Spiegel Film and TV School in Jerusalem, which now sits in one of four buildings in a major impressive cultural complex in downtown Jerusalem.  Schorr served for 30 years in that position from 1989 to 2018.

 In this sophisticated documentary film, he has combined three elements -- a personal memoir, the story of the state of Israel (since its establishment in 1948), and the story of his grandfather who had a profound impact on his life.  In so doing, he combines documentary footage, family movies and stills, and even some re-enactments. The results are a fabulous interweaving, with superb editing and excellent cinematography (particularly of Jerusalem and Safed).

Schorr’s grandfather, Rabbi Avraham Zeida Heller, was an orthodox rabbi, fourth generation in Safed. In fact, his own grandfather had been the chief rabbi of Safed in the early 19^th century!  Rabbi Avraham Zeida Heller was the head of a Safed yeshivah during the War of Independence and was known for believing in both the importance of prayer and military defense.  He is quoted in the film as saying: “It is important to recite Psalms, but the miracle was when the Palmach arrived!” He was married with five daughters, one of whom was the mother of Renen Schorr. 

The film is centered around many years of an exchange of letters between the grandfather and the grandson.  The elder is forever begging his grandson (in literary Hebrew) to give up his love of Truffaut and to follow the path of Uri Zohar, to carry on the Jewish tradition. [Uri Zohar, who was a hero to Schorr in his early years of filmmaking in the 1970s, was a famous Israeli filmmaker who gave up film for a life as an ultra-orthodox rabbi.]

In this poignantly personal film, Schorr portrays his growing up, his living through the War of Attrition with Egypt (1969-1970), army life, his service as a war correspondent, the horrors of the Yom Kippur War of 1973, his gradual falling in love with the field of cinema and his profession as a teacher and filmmaker.  The descriptions of the hardships of producing a full-length feature film as a young artist were eye-opening.  Moreover, the footage that he found and used in the film was stupendous, including footage from Late Summer Blues itself. This famous film was well-known in Israel for its satirical criticism of the War of Attrition with Egypt. The screenplay raised many critical questions about the goals and futility of war, which are particularly relevant for our current situation in Israel today, when we are fighting two wars of attrition.

In 1989, Schorr was chosen by Teddy Kollek, the popular mayor of Jerusalem, to head a new film school which was being established at that time.  Schorr had to contend with the obstacle of drawing secular film students away from Tel Aviv and bringing them to Jerusalem.

The film reveals the tensions in Israeli society between the religious and secular, between the film world of Tel Aviv and the dreams of Teddy Kollek for Jerusalem, between the holiness of Safed and the hedonism of Tel Aviv. 

Schorr’s grandfather lived well into his 90’s and a final request is sent to his grandson – make a movie about me.  Towards the end of the film, Schorr changes his name officially to Renen Schorr Heller, as a beautiful way of memorializing his grandfather, and he undertakes to direct a scene which was written by his grandfather and which takes place at the turn of the 20^th century in Safed. 

Wake Up, Grandson is an extraordinary documentary film (93 minutes) – beautifully conceived, with great pacing, which combines the personal and the national in an  effortless way.

The film is available from Go2Films.

 

 

Come Closer by Tom Nesher

Come Closer is the award-winning debut film of Tom Nesher, the daughter of well-known filmmaker Avi Nesher.  Six years ago, the Nesher family suffered a terrible tragedy when the son was killed in a car accident. This is a personal film which offers Tom Nesher’s expression of some of the feelings of having lost her brother at that time.While the film's narrative is based on this tragedy, it is not an autobiographical film but rather a work of fiction.

The film is a psychological study of two women coping with enormous loss, which is a tremendously appropriate subject for Israeli audiences especially this year.

Eden and Nati, brother and older sister, are very close.  On Nati’s birthday, Eden has him kidnapped and brought to the beach where they have an all-night party with music, drinking and drugs.  Unbeknownst to Eden, Nati decides to slip away to see his secret girlfriend, Maya. On the way, Nati is killed in a terrible early morning accident, and Eden’s world is turned upside down.  She becomes a difficult personality -- edgy, reckless, aggressive, and completely self-centered. 

Noticing the young Maya at the funeral, Eden sets out to find her, to ostensibly befriend her, and to express her anger, feelings of betrayal and loss. Maya is not so easily shocked.  She too has much to say to Eden.  In grappling with the death of the person they each loved, a strange bond is created between the two.

The film includes a bit too many clichéd scenes that we have seen in so many other Israeli films – a nod to Holocaust education (which was in bad taste), an unnecessary pissing scene (but this time it’s a girl pissing off the back of a truck), lots of clubbing and drinking, and a trip to the stunning beaches of Sinai.  Nevertheless, the film is innovative in its own way -- through the provocative elements, the use of great music, and the way that the two women were coping with their grief and were trying to keep the memory of Nati alive through their complex relationship with each other.

Come Closer won the award for Best Debut film at the Jerusalem Film Festival this past July.  And more recently, it won top honors at the Ophir Awards– taking prizes for both best director and best film! 

The Mystery of Roni Kalderon

Wanted: Roni Kalderon is a fascinating documentary film by Hilla Medalia and Erez Laufer.  The film follows the extraordinary story of Roni Kalderon like a thriller, from his early days in the 1970s as a 17-year-old rising star, playing for the Hapoel Tel Aviv soccer team till his disappearance from a prison in Sao Paulo in the 1990s.   

Much of the soundtrack of the film is Kalderon’s voice recorded by Israeli journalist, Rafi Reshef, who traveled all the way to a Sao Paulo prison in 1992 to interview him.  The story goes back to the 1970s, to a young man, described as a troublemaker, moving from team to team, partying, and clubbing.  He loved the thrills, the fooling around, and eventually got involved with drugs. 

When Kalderon is recruited to play for Ajax in the Netherlands, he is forced to endure a one-year ban since a player can’t just go off and play for another team.  He was only 18 years-old at the time.  Soon after, he returns to Israel and helps the Tel Aviv youth team win the Asian cup.  Then begins a period of moving from team to team – first to Ajax’s biggest rival, Rotterdam, then Paris, back to Israel to Hapoel’s rival, Beitar, then Ramat Gan. 

By the 1980s he was caught for trafficking in heroin, and imprisoned in Israel.  After that, there are many more surprises in his life’s journey.

Wanted: Roni Kalderon (documentary, 92 minutes) is a well-developed film, with lots of twists and turns.  We encounter people from his past, including his Brazilian wife, his two brothers, and his soccer companions. We finally feel that we know this extraordinary, charming, and extremely popular character. 

On the other hand, we don’t know him at all – how can one really understand such an enigmatic fellow?  His story is puzzling, since we certainly can’t solve the mystery surrounding his disappearance.  You can’t help but wonder what caused a successful Israeli young man to go from being a popular soccer star to a big player on the international drug scene.  Was it money? Was it ego? Was it the world of temptations?

The film is available from Nahum Laufer at laufern@netvision.net.il

New Israeli Film, Kissufim, Now Available on Netflix

Kissufim 77, directed by Keren Nechmad, is a coming-of-age film, set in 1977, just when Sadat came to Jerusalem and extends his hand in peace. 

After their military service, the Kibbutz Kissufim Garin Nahal members return to the kibbutz for a few months of service. 

The kibbutz is located on the border with the Gaza strip and was violently attacked by Hamas terrorists on October 7^th, 2023.  22 persons were massacred including 6 Thai agricultural workers.  Four members of the kibbutz were taken hostage that day. Although the viewer cannot help but think about that terrible day while watching the film, the film was actually shot before October 7^th, but it is dedicated to the victims of the atrocities of that day.  In addition, the narrative takes place in 1977, so the film is actually a period piece – both in story and in style.

Yoav and Ron are friends, and are both vying for Eli’s attention.  Eli is still a virgin and is not so sure that she’s so interested.  Meanwhile, a bunch of German volunteers arrive to work on the kibbutz.  Add into that a bit of Israeli dancing, late night partying, and visits to the Gaza beach.  There is also one flashback to their army service, when all the guys were on a patrol, waiting on a hill for an enemy unit.  As the enemy passes by, Yoav decides not to engage.  Was he a coward or was it the right decision?

The young members of the group are given a number of rules – no fraternizing between boys and girls; no taking food out of the dining hall; no taking kibbutz vehicles off the kibbutz.  Needless to say, they succeed in breaking all the rules!  There is the inevitable pairing off, drinking, partying, jealousies and the dangers of living on a border kibbutz. 

Kissufim 77 is a film that takes us back to when kibbutzim were actually kibbutzim and there was hope that because peace with Egypt had arrived, perhaps we would be able to live in peace with our neighbors.