Foxtrot by Samuel Maoz

Israel’s Minister of Culture, Miri Regev, has been trying desperately to censor Israeli films and filmmakers.  Her latest attempt included heavy criticism of Samuel Maoz’s new award-winning film, Foxtrot, which she admits she hasn’t seen!  Due to the controversy over the film, I decided to go see it right away, in order to show support for it and also to see it before it is removed from Israeli screens. 

Foxtrot is a serious, strangely compelling and fascinating film, well-worth seeing!   And just today we heard the news that the film is the winner of the Silver Lion award at the Venice Film Festival!

The film is about bereavement, military service, the humiliation imposed on Palestinians at the checkpoints, the boredom and tension that the young soldiers who man the checkpoints have to deal with, and how the occupation is eating away at our soul.  Foxtrot portrays a family tragedy in a society in which tragedy is so randomly distributed among the population, as we see in the opening sequence. 

Michael Feldman is an architect (played by Lior Ashkenazi) married to a wonderful wife, with two great kids, a beautiful apartment, and a bit of a chip on his shoulder.  His son, Yonatan, is serving in a small unit (whose call name on the military radio is “foxtrot”) somewhere on the moonscape of the West Bank where they are manning a lonely and somewhat surrealistic checkpoint. 

The film is filled with metaphors and symbols.  For example, the unit’s pre-fab hut is crookedly falling into the mire of the lunar terrain, something that one of the soldiers is measuring every night, desperately worried that one day they will all disappear into the muck.  For a long time, a camel has symbolized the majestic yet lumbering and lazy Middle Eastern Arab – here it ultimately brings about our undoing. And the enormous bulldozer, which everyone associates with one of the major tools of the occupation since it is used to destroy Palestinian homes, is the instrument of a major military cover-up of tragic events at a checkpoint.  The film also offers a Holocaust allegory which highlights the terrible feelings of survivor's guilt in the second generation (the generation of the soldier's father). And the foxtrot itself -- you dance around and around but always return to the same spot.
    

This is not an easy film to watch.  It is hard-hitting and stylized, using a lot of shots from above, a perspective which makes the viewer stand back and take note.  But it is also brilliant in many ways, using the cinematic medium to portray and criticize, something that the filmmaker should be credited for and not censored! In a democratic society, this type of film which looks critically at our contemporary reality is important for raising public awareness and potentially bringing about political change.  

Foxtrot is the story of a society that is exhausted from bereavement -- smoking marijuana or simply engaging in denial are some of the major ways of coping, according to this filmmaker.  It is a brilliant and provocative film which offers a shocking and effective cinematic criticism of the military establishment.

Samuel Maoz previously directed the prize-winning film, Lebanon, about a tank unit during the early days of the War in Lebanon in 1982 and is based on Maoz's own combat experiences during that war (previously reviewed on this blog).  

Foxtrot is available from The Match Factory and Sony. 

Longing by Savi Gabizon

At the Jerusalem Film Festival this week, I had the opportunity to view Savi Gabizon’s new feature film, Longing.  It is an extremely well-made and compelling film about family and bereavement.  It is also weird yet touching.

One day, a man’s past lover, who he hasn’t seen in about 20 years, comes to tell him that they had a lovely son together.  It was a long time ago, and she never told him.  But now she has come to tell him because their son died about a week before in a terrible car accident, and she felt he would want to know.  The man becomes obsessed with the son he never knew.  He is a successful businessman, but he puts it all aside to undertake a journey to discover his son – he travels up north to Acre, where the boy and his mother and her husband had been living.  There he learns about his son, who he was, who were his friends, and how he lived his life.  It turns out that his son was a bit of a loner, played piano, did drugs, and fell in love with his high school French teacher.  The film is filled with different characters who knew his son in some way, or with people who have also experienced loss. 

But none of this actually tells you what the film is about.  It’s about taking care of and defending your child, about caring for him, your responsibility toward him, and even worrying about his future.  It’s about obsession, love and longing for what you never had – and all of this is taken to the extreme, even to the absurd. 

In his other award-winning films, Shuroo (1990), Lovesick on Nana St. (1995) and Nina’s Tragedies (2003), Savi Gabizon also uses satire and the absurd to make a point about issues of societal disaffection.  But here, in Longing, his societal commentary deals with family, loss, and memorializing the dead.

Write to United Channels Movies for distribution information – info@ucm-film.com

One Week and a Day by Asaf Polonsky

The award-winning One Week and a Day, directed by Asaf Polonsky, is a quirky tragi-comedy about fathers and sons, family issues, and bereavement.  It is interesting to note that this is a film about losing a son – not to terrorism or to war -- but to cancer.  This is a personal loss which is very difficult to deal with and is not as common in Israeli films.  First-time feature film director Polonsky must be commended for tackling such a difficult subject head-on.

The story is about Eyal and Vicky, a married couple who have just finished sitting shiva for their son, Ronnie.  When the shiva house clears out and they are left alone, they agree to try to get back to normal life.  Vicky tries hard -- going to work, doing her usual jogging, and even keeping a dentist appointment. 

Eyal, on the other hand, is not able to even make the attempt.  A bit bewildered, he sets out to collect his son’s belongings from the hospice where he was taken care of at the end of his illness.  Instead of the colorful blanket that he is looking for, he finds what remains of his son’s medical marijuana, and thus ensues a really humorous scene in which we watch a middle-aged man trying to roll a joint!  Enlisting assistance from a somewhat spaced-out young neighbor who works as a delivery boy, he learns much more than how to roll a joint, and thus begins a day of mischief and healing.

In a last minute attempt to reserve the burial plot next to his son, Eyal finds himself at the funeral of the woman who is to be buried there.  Instead of a series of gags (like the rest of the film), this scene in the cemetery was the most compelling.  Not only are we drawn in by the eulogy, but also by the man delivering it!  Here Eyal is quite visibly moved -- it can be surprisingly comforting to know who will be lying next to your son and perhaps, even watching over him.  The dozens and dozens and dozens of graves that confuse Eyal as he runs around the cemetery, and the tall buildings of Tel Aviv crushing down on him from the background, all seem to provide a perfect setting for a troubled man who is having a crisis following the loss of a grown child.

One Week and a Day is available from NewEurope Film Sales.

Changing Direction

Within the Eye of the Storm , directed by Shelley Hermon, is a hard-hitting and emotional documentary film (52 minutes) that tells the story of two men -- Bassam from Anata, a Palestinian village east of Jerusalem, and Rami, from Motza, an Israeli town west of Jerusalem.  Both men have had terrible tragedies in their lives -- they have both lost daughters in the terribly vicious and cruel cycle of violence that gripped Jerusalem during the past years. 

As a young man, Bassam was imprisoned in Hebron prison for having thrown a grenade at Israeli soldiers. There, he learned to "see" the other side.  Therefore, when his young daughter, Abir, was shot and killed by an Israeli soldier's rubber bullet, he decides not to take revenge but rather to turn to the courts and to take the State of Israel to trial.  He is an active member of Combatants forPeace.

Rami 's 14-year-old daughter, Smadar, was killed by a suicide bomber on Ben Yehuda St.  Instead of becoming angry and demanding justice, he dedicates his life to speaking before groups, carrying  a message of hope that we must learn to speak to each other before there can be peace.  Rami is active in the Parents Circle.

Rami and Bassam are two men who lead "a path of hope".  They have established a special bond between them, and they co-host a radio talk show for Radio All for Peace, an Arab-Israeli radio station.  The name of their program is Changing Direction. 

This is a film about hope, about dialogue, about learning to talk to one another.  

Rami talks about his personal journey and his first encounter with Palestinian families at a bereaved families meeting.  Bassam talks about his civil suit against the State of Israel.  They go together to Jenin, during the height of the second intifada, to meet with Palestinian men with blood on their hands, to talk with them and to show them another way.  They are determined to use the deaths of their daughters as symbols of hope.

The film is dedicated to the memory of Abir Aramin and Smadar Elhanan.

Within the Eye of the Storm is distributed by Michael Treves at JMT Films.

The World is Funny by Shemi Zarhin

Screenwriter and director Shemi Zarhin is known for his award-winning films Passover Fever (1995), Dangerous Acts (1998), Monsieur Shlomi (2003) and Aviva My Love (2006).  His latest film, The World is Funny, opened this week in Israeli movie theaters.  All of his films can be characterized as having a complex script, authentic and well-delineated quirky characters, intelligent grappling with issues of gender, and superb directing.  Two of these films, Aviva My Love and Passover Fever have previously been reviewed on this blog.  Aviva My Love and The World is Funny, both take place in Zarhin's hometown, Tiberias.  

Born in 1961, Zarhin studied journalism and public relations and then received a BA (1986) from Tel Aviv University in the Dept. of Film and TV. He taught filmmaking at Tel Aviv University (1989-1994) and at the Sam Spiegel Film and TV School in Jerusalem (1990-1999).  In addition to directing, he is a novelist and an accomplished screenwriter, having written the screenplays for his own films and for others (including co-scriptwriter of one of my favorites -- Ayelet Menahemi's Noodle 2007). 

In his new film, The World is Funny, he uses a type of narrator or story-teller.  She is a muse who goes from house to house, toting her mop and broom, learning people's stories which she uses for her material as a participant in a writing workshop, taking place at the Tiberias library.  The participants in the workshop, a wonderful array of diverse characters, make up the background chorus, like in a Greek tragedy, relating  modern-day fables. This background is provided for the tragic stories of the three main characters -- Yardena is a bereaved mother, having lost her daughter in the army;  Miron has lost his wife in a terrible car  accident in which his older son was badly hurt;  Golan is desperately in love with a woman dying of cancer.  These three people, who have suffered terrible tragedies,  are siblings, whose stories intertwine as the film develops. 

Golan is crazy about the Gashash and seeks out Shaike (from the Gashash) to come and entertain his dying sweetheart. Shaike actually appears in a number of scenes and sings on stage at the conclusion of the film -- singing Naomi Shemer's Lu Yehi, backed up by a children's chorus , giving the otherwise old-fashioned song more of a hip and upbeat melody.

Notwithstanding the vulgarity, this is a quirky film about the fine line between tragedy and comedy, about whether stories reflect reality or reality is just a story being told, about bereavement and family relationships,  about living in the past and not being able to cope with the present, about living in the world of fiction when reality is too difficult to bear.

Contact info: talia@piefilms.co.il or osnat.h.k.@gmail.com

Passover Fever directed by Shemi Zarhin

With the holiday of Passover coming up next week, I thought it would be fun to post info about an Israeli feature film called Passover Fever, directed by Shemi Zarhin (produced in 1995), which takes place on the background of Passover.

The award-winning film portrays a holiday gathering at the old family homestead.  It combines elements of family intrigue with hope, love and dedication to solving family issues. This is a film about the dysfunctional family, offering a rich tapestry of characters with psychological issues, the all-suffering Jewish mother, and a new image of the Israeli male – all living in the shadow of having lost one of their sons in a military accident. 

Gila Almagor as the Ashkenazi matriarchal figure and Yosef Shiloah as her devoted Sephardi husband are gathered with all of their children and their spouses and children for the Passover holiday. But, as at any family gathering, there are underlying issues and tensions!  

Only one child is conspicuously missing -- the son whose memory lingers in the background.  In fact, his memory haunts the family the same way that terrorism, political insecurity and memories of war gnaw at the basic fabric of Israeli society in the mid-1990s, even as people believed that peace was drawing near.

Let us carefully analyze one particularly poignant scene, in which the mother and father confront each other over their memories of what they went through during the days immediately following their son's death. 

The mother blames the father for going abroad during the period of mourning and leaving her alone to climb the walls with her grief.  The father, on the other hand, claims that he was forced to leave and go abroad because her all-encompassing suffering and grief left no room for him to mourn.  She was not the only one who had lost a son, he says. 

What is he saying between the lines?  He is saying – move over and make room for me to grieve.  The grieving widow or mother who previously had a monopoly on mourning in Israeli film – and Israeli society -- must now move aside and make room for the newly sensitive and emotional Israeli male, who is begging to be allowed to enter into the realm of mourning – a realm that was once a uniquely female area.

This was the message of the film back in 1995.  Today it is already a given that men, in addition to women, can be sensitive, mourn and even cry. We've come a long way.

The film offers authentically-evoked personalities, psychological obsessions and warm family nostalgia all under one roof.  Zarhin combines a linear storyline with whimsy and fantasy, as relationships become clarified.  Just as falling rain in Baruch Dienar's They Were Ten and blooming tulips in Eli Cohen's Under the Domim Tree signify overwhelming optimism in the wake of past tragedy, so too the unbelievable falling snow in Passover Fever washes away suspicion within the family, signifying hope and renewal for the future. 

Too old to be children – too young to be adults

Adolescence and Coming-of-age Films

People often ask me if adolescents in Israel are really different from adolescents around the world. The truth is that they are and they aren't. When you take the difficulties of growing up in a society under siege and you combine it with the pressures of youth and adolescent unease worldwide, perhaps you would have a better insight into Israeli teens.

In some ways Israeli youth are living lives in a pressure cooker. They are suffering from uniquely Israeli issues such as the stresses and psychological trauma of life under difficult circumstances. In addition, however, just like young people around the world, they are suffering from urban alienation, identity crises, and family issues such as divorce and blended families.

Nonetheless, it is difficult to generalize about Israeli teens – there are those who run from their upcoming military responsibilities and those who embrace them, there are those who rebel against the religious or ideological paths set by their parents and those who conform, and there are those who stand up and shoulder difficult burdens in an attempt to make this a better place.

Tikun Olam -- Taking Responsibility to make things right

The most important film in this category is Someone to Run With (2006) – directed by Oded Davidoff, script by Noah Stollman, based on the novel by David Grossman. Set against the background of Jerusalem, this is the story of two adolescents, one of whom has the strength and courage to fight back against the world of drugs and teen exploitation, two young people who are able to make a difference.

It is summertime in Jerusalem. Tamar receives a phone call from someone who needs her help, someone who sounds stoned on the phone. She is a 16-year-old girl, who cuts off all her hair, and sets out with her guitar and her dog, to live on the streets of Jerusalem. In her desperate search (for a boy who later turns out to be her brother), she is sucked into the world of a rough gang who exploit street kids and their talents as a front for their drug trafficking.

Parallel to Tamar’s story is the story of Assaf, whose summer job has assigned him to find the owner of Tamar's runaway dog. Taking his job seriously, Assaf obsessively runs after the dog around the city of Jerusalem and slowly unravels the story of Tamar. The two stories run parallel throughout the film and eventually intersect.

Tamar can also sing and play the guitar, and there are a number of very sweet musical numbers.
Combining music and stark, gritty realism, this is a story of strength and commitment. It is also an ode to the city of Jerusalem, and its youth. Jerusalem is an extraordinary part of the film – perhaps one of the protagonists. As Assaf and the dog run from place to place, searching for Tamar, they encounter so much of the city and its life – its alleyways and parks, its shops and outlying districts, and its underworld. Tamar and Assaf have the strength to fight back against the underbelly of the city and to make a difference.

An Adolescent Story

Another recent coming-of-age film, Summer Story (directed by Shmuel Peleg Haimovich), also deals with trying to make things right. It is the summer of 1982 and there is a war raging in Lebanon. Gal (12-years-old), who lives on a Moshav and has a summer job delivering the local mail, finds himself particularly attracted to Chaya, an almost 20-year-old young woman who is at home all the time due to a heart defect.

Writing letters to soldiers at the front, Chaya is particularly pining for one of the soldiers with whom she is corresponding. When he sends her a picture, Gal, as the mailman, intercepts it and rips it up in a fit of jealousy. When Chaya becomes ill, however, and has to undergo heart surgery, Gal decides to make things right and tries to get a picture of the soldier for her, thinking that it will make her happy and help her through the surgery. He travels to Kiryat Shmona, trying to get to the front in Lebanon, in order to find the soldier.

This is a naive and sweet adolescent film. Summer Story is available from Go2Films

Relating to Upcoming Military Service

Perhaps the best known and most sensitive coming-of-age film is Late Summer Blues (directed by Renen Schorr, 1986). The film, which takes place during the War of Attrition of 1968-70, portrays a group of Israeli youths, graduating high school in an atmosphere of ongoing war -- their reactions to the death of a close friend, the needs of their parents and schoolteachers to shield them as if they were still children, and their ambivalent feelings towards army service.

Although the film was produced in the 1980s, it describes a period in Israel's history which was a period of ongoing war and tension, on the background of the student anti-war movement in Europe and the United States. The film's highlight is a protest song that the youth in the film write and perform, in which they sing: “We don’t want them to tell us what’s right and wrong; we don’t want wars, orphans, tombstones”.

During his battle with lung cancer, before he died, Ehud Manor, Israeli lyricist and music historian, began to talk more about his family, his youth, and his own coming to terms with death. He said that after having lost his father when he was young and his younger brother during the War of Attrition, he was finally able to write a protest song against the ongoing wars, death, and also in opposition to the songs of his parents’ generation. He wrote the song "אין לי ארץ אחרת" Ayn Li Eretz Acheret (I have no other land) in the 1980s as a protest song. Just as Late Summer Blues was produced as a protest statement in the 1980s, after the War in Lebanon, about the War of Attrition, this song was also written in the 1980s. Although the story of the film and the background of the song take place in 1968-1970, Manor admits that this is not the kind of statement he could have made at that time. The new feeling of vulnerability, which was an outcome of the Yom Kippur War (1973), and the controversial nature of the War in Lebanon (1982) both created an atmosphere in the 1980s that encouraged and permitted protest.

Universal issues vs. particularistic Israeli issues

Broken Wings (directed by Nir Bergman, 2002) is a film about bereavement, a touching drama about the disintegration of a family living with loss. Many have acclaimed the film for its grappling with a universal issue. However, the film is also uniquely Israeli -- the story takes place following the death of the father from an allergic reaction to a bee sting, something so tragic, trivial and apparently meaningless, that can be seen as a parallel to the senseless deaths that Israelis are facing all too often in reality. See a previous blog posting on this film for more details.

Additional films about youth that can be found on this blog include:

• Lost Islands
• Sweet Mud
• Eli and Ben
• Turn Left at the End of the World
• Secrets
• Intimate Grammar
  

The Green Dumpster Mystery

One of my favorite films of recent years is The Green Dumpster Mystery, directed by Tal Haim Yoffe, which is an example of the blurring of the line between documentary and feature films. I highly recommend it for Selichot -- is it too early to begin thinking about programming right after the summer?

Since I have reviewed this film already on this blog, I have chosen here to quote from a review by Uri Klein in Ha'aretz (July 21, 2008) --

This is a documentary film with "staged" and perhaps even fictional elements -- and one of the best Israeli films of recent times. In an ostensibly light tone, which balances the serious subjects in the film -- history and memory, Holocaust and bereavement -- the film tells the story of the director himself, who as he rode his scooter through South Tel Aviv, found a stash of old photographs in a dumpster.

In the wake of this find, he sets out on a quest to find the people in the photos. Gradually, as in a very good thriller, in which secrets are revealed with increasing dramatic and emotional force, the director sets the stage for an Israeli family saga.

Yoffe succeeds in digressing from a personal story into a drama with symbolic power. This is a serious, complex and important work.

Noodle by Ayelet Menachemi

Last night at Beit Avi Chai, a cultural center in downtown Jerusalem, we opened our series WOMEN MAKE MOVIES and screened the film Noodle (2007), which was followed by a fascinating discussion with the director, Ayelet Menachemi.

Winner of the Jury Grand Prize at the Montreal World Film Festival, the film stars Mili Avital and Anat Waxman, who are good friends in real life, and play sisters with a very intense and honest relationship. The film is a dramatic and sensitive story about an El Al flight attendant named Miri, whose Chinese housekeeper is suddenly deported, leaving her with the woman's 6-year-old little boy. It is also about Miri's relationship with her sister, and with her sister's estranged husband.

This is a well-scripted (co-scripted by Menachemi and Shemi Zarhin who directed Aviva My Love, which is also about sisters) yet humorous story about the issues of foreign workers, about bereavement, about the bond between sisters, and about learning to love again. Miri learns to love this little Chinese boy, and she is moved to give him back to his mother, especially because she loves him – even if she has to take risks to do it. The film has many dramatic moments, including the scene in which we realize that Miri no longer thinks of the little boy as an alien or a foreigner, but she has become attached to him as a human being. This is a turning point in the film. Miri is twice widowed, having lost both husbands in the wars, and only through the love of this little child does she take the big step of being able to love again. But in addition to the dramatic moments, the film has a lot of sarcasm between the sisters, and humor and emotion with the little boy.

The audience was enthusiastic about the film, and enjoyed the discussion with Menachemi. She discussed how difficult it was to find the right little boy to play the part of Noodle. They worked with a casting agency in Hong Kong who had a list of about 2,000 boys. However, they recognized the right boy immediately! He was 7 1/2 years old at the time of the shooting, and they had to work with him through a translator. In a particularly touching scene when he talks to his mother who is far away in Beijing, his voice cracks and he cries. It was a triumph of acting. In trying to help him to get into the right mood, the translater told him a story of a friend of hers who died in a car crash. But it didn't help him. So, completely by himself, he wove a story about not being able to see his own mother, and it helped him to do the scene. He was so proud when he got it right. When Menachemi tried to get him to admit that he really did a great job, he said that his mother always taught him not to develop too much pride.

When asked whether the story of the film was based on a true story, Menachemi talked about different fragments from her own life experiences. When the immigration issue became very heavy in Israel during the early part of this decade, and the immigration police had a quota of people to deport each year, she became interested in stories of deportation. This story didn't actually happen, but stories like it did. She went to the immigration people to ask if this story was possible and they helped her. In addition, she traveled in China about 15 years ago, and it left a huge impression on her. "No one speaks real English there – you have to find other ways to communicate and have to use emotional intelligence to get along. I felt this was how our boy must have felt without language." Finally, she met an El Al flight attendant who had lost 2 husbands in war. All of these elements come together in the film.

This is a story of one woman who can make a difference. Sometimes we shirk our responsibilities by denying the capacity of each and every one of us to do tikun olam. Here is an amazing woman who takes a risk to make the world a better place. According to Menachemi, taking a risk and reuniting the boy with his mother was a redemptive act.

The film is available from: israelifilms@gmail.com

“Footprints in the Sand” directed by Ravital Zivan (Shtern)

Is it humanly possible to carry on after losing your entire family? From what source would you draw the strength to continue working, eating, breathing? David Chatuel lost his heavily pregnant wife and four daughters in a brutal terrorist attack in Gush Katif. As a religious man with tremendous inner strength and sensitivity, he believes that while his wife and children were taken from him, he remains on this earth for a purpose. This gives him the determination and the strength to work and to rebuild his life. This is a story of faith, tremendous sadness and great hope.

Footsteps in the Sand עקבות בחול is an extremely touching and even profound film. David Chatuel talks about his wife and daughters, how much he misses them when he comes home from work at the end of the day, how he used to worry about them and they worried about him. His life continues – he has friends who care for him and he has an elementary school to run.

It is the summer of the disengagement from Gaza -- when the Israeli army pulled out and all the Gush Katif settlements were dismantled (summer 2005). The disengagement tore Israelis apart politically and emotionally. It didn’t matter if you supported the settlers in their efforts to remain in their homes, or if you supported the pull-out, you couldn’t help but realize how difficult it is to be uprooted from your home, from your livelihood, from your roots.

On a personal level, David Chatuel finds it terribly hard to pack up the lives of his children and put them into a cardboard box. His sister-in-law, his wife's sister, comes to help him. Piece by piece, the children’s toys, pictures, books are all removed from their shelves and boxed up. Imagine how hard it must have been for David Chatuel to leave behind his home and his memories.

Part of the tragedy of the disengagement from Gaza, or those who lived at Gush Katif, like David Chatuel, and were removed from their homes and resettled elsewhere, is what remains of their homes and memories? They are like footprints in the sand that fade with each passing moment.

Footsteps in the Sand (documentary, 2006, 50 minutes) is available from Hedva Goldshmidt at http://www.go2films.com/

“Broken Wings” directed by Nir Bergman

I have been asked recently not only to recommend and discuss new films, but also to recommend films that are “out there” on DVD.

One of my favorite Israeli feature films of all times is Broken Wings כנפיים שבורות which won the Wolgin Award at the Jerusalem Film Festival (2002) and first prize at the Tokyo Film Festival. This is a tragic story about an ordinary family and how they deal with loss, especially how adolescents react to the death of their father. The film is surprisingly authentic, including a great script, typical teenage pranks, some nudity (no real sex) and a fair amount of vulgarity!

The story takes place in Haifa at the end of the summer vacation and on the first day back to school. Dafna (Orly Zilbershatz-Banai who won awards for this role) is recently widowed, the mother of four, working night shifts as a nurse at the hospital, desperately trying to make ends meet. Her two teenage children – one a boy and one a girl – react very differently to the family pressures. Her daughter, Maya, pitches in by washing the floor, making sandwiches, and taking care of her younger siblings. Yair, on the other hand, is out at night, distributing leaflets dressed up in a full body costume as a mouse, having an existential crisis, no longer believing that life is worth living, very bright but desperately in need of attention. Why does the young man hide from reality in his mouse costume? Perhaps because of the tremendous burden being placed on young men in our society who are forced to grow up so quickly and shoulder the responsibilities of serving in the army and defending the State. There is a terrible void left by the father and Yair is not yet ready to face the responsibilities of being the man in the family.

The film was produced in 2002 at the height of the despair of the 2nd intifada. (Etched in all of our memories is the shockingly brutal attack at a Passover Seder at the Park Hotel in Netanya which took place during Passover 2002.) During this period, Israeli citizens were being killed often by drive-by shootings, by terrorist attacks, and soldiers were dying in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

When Maya reveals that her father died from an allergic reaction to a bee sting, the audience suddenly realizes that this was a senseless and meaningless death. But when is death meaningful? Dying for your country, perhaps -- but certainly not in a terrorist attack or in a drive-by shooting. This also brings to mind the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, perhaps a father figure for all young people, who was killed by one of our own simply for wanting to make peace.

Perhaps the filmmakers were trying to remind us that so many people were dying as a result of “the matsav” that we must not forget or minimize the tragedy and suffering of those who lost loved one to deaths such as car accidents or bee stings. Another interpretation, perhaps even more hard-hitting, could be that the father died a shockingly senseless and tragic death, a metaphor for those terribly meaningless deaths from terrorist attacks that we were experiencing all around us.

"Shiva" ("Seven Days") directed by Ronit Elkabetz and Shlomi Elkabetz premieres at the Jerusalem Film Festival

Ronit Elkabetz is well-known to Israeli cinema fans. In recent years, she played the mistress in Dover Kashashvilli's Late Marriage and starred as the lonely cafe owner in the development town in Eran Kolirin's The Band's Visit. Here, in Shiva, she grabs the limelight again, this time in the role of Vivian, one of the siblings in a large Moroccan family, the Ohayon family.

Set in the claustrophic atmosphere of a Jewish/Moroccan/Israeli family during the period of mourning, this is a film about family issues, problems of getting along, sharing and overcoming rivalries. The film opens at the gravesite of Maurice, one of the brothers. There are 6 brothers and 2 sisters, and many old grievances, gossip, whispers, financial collapse and intrigue. Much of the family tension revolves around the two sisters -- – Vivian (Ronit Elkabetz) and Simona (Hannah Azulai-Hasfari). Vivian desperately wants a divorce from her cruel and manipulative husband and Simona is still suffering from her change in status in the family since her husband died a few years ago.

Adding to the stress of all the financial and family issues, the story takes place on the background of the 1991 Gulf War. There are many comic elements in the film, such as when the sirens sound and confusion reigns as the entire family runs to the sealed room to put on gas masks. Another element – perhaps more ironic than comic – is the fact that one brother's wife is of German descent. We actually hear Moshe Ivgi (in the role of the brother whose business is in financial ruin) speaking in German to his wife who is demanding that the family return her uncle's German reparations monies that she has invested in the Moroccan family business!

In Hebrew, French, Moroccan, with a tiny bit of German.