If it were a book or a movie, you'd bet that its writers went a bit too far: it describes the journey of a young Israeli woman to Bolivia - where she was accused of attempting to smuggle 10 kilograms of cocaine, entered a cruel prison for women, had an affair with the head of the La Paz crime organization and raised a family in prison with an orphaned baby and a transgender partner. And if that wasn't enough, she was on a crash course when she herself fell into drugs. Only after she was weaned, partly to save the loved ones in her life, did she manage to escape from the bottom and smuggle herself and her family to Brazil.
But this is a story that really happened to an Israeli girl named Sharon Yitzhaki. She portrayed it in the book Ten Kilos of Cocaine, which became a bestseller on Amazon. The book is currently being turned into a film directed by Doron Eran, whose filming in Guatemala has been completed and is currently in the final stages of editing. The title role features Daniela Kertesz, who starred alongside Brad Pitt in the film "War of the Worlds Z". The film, which is budgeted at $3 million in Israeli and American funding, was shot by Barry Markowitz, an esteemed Hollywood cinematographer, and edited by the editors of the series Narcos.
In a joint interview, Yitzhaki and Eran talk for the first time about the film, and also about the bumpy road that led to it. Yitzhaki is now 50 years old - a beautiful, petite and thin woman. Her blue eyes smile as she tells her ordeal, but the smile is overshadowed by a twinge of sadness – remnants of the evil she experienced, and which she also triumphed over.
Youth love in Europe
"I was born and raised in Jerusalem. At some point I realized that the city was small on me and not suitable for me. I loved funk, music, colors, art. When I was about 13, I started going down to Tel Aviv. I left school, ran away from all the frameworks, connected with the punk guys at Dizengoff Square, it was a crazy time," she returns to the starting point. "We lived there, hung out together, we were a bunch. At home I was on and off until I rented my own apartment in Tel Aviv. I dropped out of all frameworks, not school or army. It was uncreative to me."
The next stop, at the age of 22, was also the one that created the background for the story, but at this point Yitzhky had no idea where the great love of her life would take her.
"I lived in Amsterdam, and I met an Israeli guy named Ronnie there. He was a wrecking stud, a few years older than me. We were two young people who wanted to catch the world in the balls. He convinced me to come with him to Bolivia. I flowed. Flying around the world back then was nothing like today. It was a big story, and it really appealed to me. I was in love. We arrived in Bolivia and at first everything was good. Suddenly, after about two weeks, Ronnie disappeared. He told me he was going for a minute, a few hours had passed and he hadn't come back.
"I'm in a foreign place, I don't speak the language, I don't know what to do, I try to call the number I had, but he didn't answer. Worried about. I wanted to hear that nothing had happened to him. In the end, he answered me, said he was okay, that he had some case, that he couldn't come. I didn't think for a moment that he was avoiding me. I was overwhelmed with so many emotions, I didn't understand what was going on. Then he told me, 'Take your things, pack my bag and go. We'll meet in Amsterdam.'"
Didn't you feel something was wrong?
"No, he was my friend, my beloved, we planned a whole world together. Love at 20 is something crazy, it's the first love I had, so I went along with it. I took my bags, went through security and boarded the plane. Suddenly, police officers came to me and took me off the plane. They spoke a language I didn't understand. Now I know they told me: 'You have drugs in your bag, we're detaining you.' But then I didn't understand why I was being taken down. I've seen a million police officers, you realize something is wrong and you don't know what. I was detained for hours at the airport. Time after time they undressed me, searched me. No one there spoke English. I didn't know what was going on, I just saw my plane run away and realized I wasn't getting on it."
Did you get a phone call?
"Nothing. The bureaucratic procedure is that you sit on a chair and everything moves around you. It's 1996, no computers, no internet, no cellphone. Nothing. Dial phones, paperwork and typewriters. I'm waiting for someone to talk to me, for someone from the embassy to come to me. A few hours later, I was transferred to the Bolivian drug department, where they are detained before a prison, and where I stayed for 30 days."
Yitzhaki, 21 years old in Amsterdam. A love that ruined her life, photo: from the private album
She talks about that month calmly, as if she had already hidden deep in the cellars of her soul the horrors she experienced there. A few minutes pass before she dives back into the starting point of her crash course. "There was crazy torture there, because they were trying to get something out of me that I couldn't give them. I was interrogated and beaten in every possible way, with my hands, but mostly with frozen towels. They would put towels in the freezer and beat them up, because it doesn't break bones. They beat me especially on the legs. Not inside, because all this time I was filmed on TV. The trial was covered in the local media, and bruises were not allowed to be seen inside. They tried to break me mentally and physically. They didn't let me eat or sleep, they interrogated me in Spanish and without me understanding a word."
Not broken?
"I'm not to blame, why would I break?" she cries out, "When you go into the sea and start drowning, you immediately try to get back up, don't you? A person's first instinct is first to live. They put me in a cell one meter by one meter, in which you can't lie down, and I'm one and a half meters tall, with a window high above. I felt like I had been thrown into a jar. They would decide when to take me to the bathroom. They took my clothes, blankets, the temperature reached 30°C during the day and the nights were freezing. I just sat there waiting for someone to save me."
But no one saved her. All she had left was an instinct for survival and a fight for her life. This is also what will accompany her further, at the next stop, which she reached a month later - the Mira Flores women's prison. There, as part of the legal process, she met Angel, a lawyer who took her case and was the first person with whom she could speak in English. "In Bolivia there's really no job for a lawyer at these stages, it's not like in Israel. You're not protecting yourself at all. As far as they're concerned, I'm guilty and he's just in touch with me, following the legal process and seeing which prison they're taking me to."
Does your family already know at this point? Maroni, did you hear anything?
"I didn't talk to Ronnie. Angel was able to talk to my family, who tried to help from afar, but we quickly realized that no one could help. There is no embassy and Israel has no diplomatic relations with Bolivia, there is only an Israeli representation there, which is a small office. The embassies at that time did not have legal force. In Israel, my family tried to initiate some media noise, but all the doors were closed to them, and we realized there was no chance."
What happened in prison?
"Mira Flores is a small prison, separated from the big prison in La Paz. It housed 60 women accused of serious crimes, dangerous, psychopathic women. It's so unlike 'Orange is the New Black.' On television, everything is terribly theatrical, and there it is dangerous. I wasn't prepared for it. You share the room sometimes with three prisoners, sometimes with ten, it varies. There is no permanence," she laughs. "In the end, I stayed there for four and a half years."
What happened during this period? Did someone try to let you go?
"There was a trial going on in the background all the time. I arrive at the court handcuffed and legged, riding the bus I'm paying for. At first I was broken to pieces after all the beatings I received during interrogations, dismantled. I've come to a place where the prisoners don't feel sorry for you. Sometimes they're worse than the cops. It's all power play. They hit, swear and harass. They stole my clothes at first, left me with underwear, shocked me in the shower. Everything changed as soon as I started speaking Spanish. I realized I had to learn the language. I listened to conversations, asked a lot, knew that if I didn't speak the language they would kill me. I realized I had to defend myself or they would murder me."
Prison "Mira Flores". "The lawyer has no role there. As far as they're concerned, you're to blame," Photo: AFP
Black shadow in Bolivia
Language made her life in prison bearable. But the light came from an unexpected place. A new transgender prisoner from South Africa entered her cell, and what began as an old prisoner's assistance to a new one turned into soulmates, and even a love story. "After about a year in prison, Terri came into my room. She's five years younger than me, and came in on a 3kg courier. We immediately connected, two strangers in this crazy cauldron. I already knew my tribe, and I needed to protect it, so that it wouldn't go through what I went through. I felt that this was my mission, that I held on because that's my job. Friendship turned into love in heart and soul, also romantic. Yes, we became a couple."
It must give a lot of strength in this crazy reality.
"It's a drop of heaven in hell. We were together until the end, and our family unit grew when Lina, the girl, was added to it. In this prison, the children were not separated from their mothers. It was forbidden to separate, especially when the father did not exist, and most of the fathers died in the cartel wars. So there were a lot of children in prison, some of them born there. One day we waited outside for some things to be brought in and just left her next to us, a few months old baby. Her mother was a drug addict who couldn't care for her, and later died in prison. We didn't know what to do. We said to each other, shall we take her? And we answered immediately - we will take her. And that's it. She stayed with us because she didn't interest anyone. There are a lot of kids walking around all the time. She lived in our room for three and a half years."
And so, Sharon manages a family unit in an unusual reality, while at the same time the legal process runs.
"According to the Bolivian judicial system, judges would come to the prison once every two weeks to visit the accused and were allowed to interrogate us in cells. The law says that as long as you're in proceedings (and most women have been), you're in jail and can't be released on bail. So they're all in jail, waiting. There were women who waited there for ten years on a bounced check. It's a draconian justice system."
Each prisoner was assigned three judges. A relationship developed between Sharon and the youngest of her three judges, Jorge, which led to the court's determination that her version was credible. She was sentenced to five years in prison for drug possession, not 20 years for trafficking. Despite this, the prosecutor at her trial haunted her like a black shadow throughout her stay in Bolivia and strongly opposed the reduction of the sentence. He later filed an appeal.
"Jorge was a young lawyer who got to the position of judge very quickly. At my trial he would always arrive completely drunk. I would help him wash his face, and that's how we bonded. I had to use everything I could. An intimate connection was also established between us. I had to do it because I knew it would benefit me in my stay. That was the most important thing to me and my family. It kept the legal process against me proportionate, because my prosecutor was a human monster, he targeted me and wouldn't let me, wanted to hang me for the sake of being seen and seen, and Jorge protected me."
Physical disengagement
At this point, Doron Eran, the director, intervenes and mentions that Yitzhaki's sentence was commuted not only thanks to the connection with that judge but mainly thanks to Amedeo de Soto, one of the heads of the local drug cartel.
The Bolivian media extensively covered the arrest of the blonde Israeli girl. The coverage did not go unnoticed by De Soto, probably the most dangerous man in La Paz. De Soto ordered the director of the women's prison to bring Isaac to his cell, which was actually a luxurious suite in San Pedro Prison – as befits drug lords, who conduct their criminal business from inside the prison.
"I came to him as a puppet. Transported. They didn't tell me anything. He is in a place called Posta, where cartel leaders and serious criminals who don't go to a regular prison sit. It's more like a hotel or resort than a prison, and even though it's like he's under house arrest, he controls everything from the inside. It's just for show. He was at least a decade older than me. I came to him and didn't know what they wanted from me. It was scary because I'd heard a lot of stories about him. I knew he had murdered a lot of people, everyone knew who he was. They brought me to him again and again according to his will."
Doron: "This man was her 'luck.' He was the strong man who slowly made her the landlady of the prison."
Sharon: "As soon as it happened, I was untouchable, whoever approached was kidnapped, and everyone who was cruel to me before was also kidnapped, because I took revenge. Absolutely, I used everything I had."
But what happened between the two of you? How can you even create a relationship like that?
"At first I was very scared, but slowly they start talking. I try to understand what my role is, what is expected of me, and a personal connection develops, and love, yes. I fell in love with him. In this particular situation, he saved my life. He taught me about the business. I became a kind of cartel head in my prison. She controls everything, manages the guards and the prisoners."
דורון: "בזכותו ובזכות השופט היא קיבלה חמש שנים ולא 20, ואחרי שנודע לה, והיא היתה מאושרת לדעת שיש לה רק עוד חצי שנה עד שתשתחרר, הגיעה המכה הנוספת. הודיעו לה שהוגש ערעור, והמשמעות של זה היא לפחות עוד עשר שנים של הליך משפטי ארוך ומסואב".
דורון ערן. עבודה בחדרי העריכה עם עורכי "נרקוס", צילום: אפרת אשל
שרון: "את הערעור שולחים לבית הדין הגבוה, שלא נמצא בלה פאס אלא בעיר אחרת לגמרי, ויש שם אלפי תיקים, וזה לוקח שנים. זו היתה הנקודה שבה נפלתי, לא יכולתי להתמודד עם זה. זה היה אחרי ארבע שנים שאני בפנים, אני מאושרת שתכף אני יוצאת משם ואז מגיעה המכה. הרגשתי שאני לא יכולה להכיל את זה. זה היה קשה מדי".
ואז, ברגע הקשה בחייה, יצחקי נפלה. בתוך זמן קצר הפכה למכורה. "הקוקאין היה הדבר הכי 'קל' באותו רגע קשה. בתוך שלושה חודשים הייתי חצי בן אדם. הילדה הקטנה פשוט ביקשה ממני 'די, בבקשה'. ידעתי שאני חייבת להיגמל, בשביל המשפחה שלי ובגלל שזה יהרוס לי עוד יותר את החיים. הלכתי למפקדת הכלא וביקשתי שתכניס אותי לבידוד בצינוק. שהיתי שם עשרה ימים ועברתי גמילה עצמית".
מה קורה בבידוד הזה?
"The physical cleansing takes three or four days. You feel like you're dead. Pain all over your body, muscles, bones, you feel all the insects you can imagine walking on you, vomiting, laxatives, sweating, hallucinations. The first four days were the hardest, but then the body needs more time to get back to itself, to learn to eat again. I weighed 45 kilograms."
Pardon in favor of the Pope
When she left the dungeon, Yitzhaki received good news when her partner told her: "The law has passed." The law was the "Law of Mercy," promulgated by the Pope ahead of the millennium year in Catholic countries and applied to all prisoners serving more than two years in prison, and there is still no verdict on their case. The law stipulated that they would be entitled to be released on bail that would match their financial ability.
Doron: "The law allowed prisoners to be released on bail, live in the city, work and report once a week. Since she met the criteria, she got out of prison, and De Soto arranged a job for her in a café and an apartment. Soon after, when she was informed that the appeal had been accepted again, meaning she had to go back to prison, she realized that she had to flee Bolivia."
When did you get to know Sharon's story and realize it would be your next film?
"Ten years ago, her book came to my office, and I immediately saw that it could be a movie. I called her into the office and we signed. Last year we filmed in Guatemala, in a first-of-its-kind Israeli-Guatemalan collaboration, with Israeli actors, including Lioz Levy, Maya Eshet and Luna Mansour, and foreign actors. The film speaks Spanish and English, with some Hebrew at first, in Sharon's dialogues with Ronnie."
Filming of the film did not go smoothly. "Guatemala is considered one of the three most violent countries in the world. I walked around all day with three security guards. It was a very stressful production. We looked for locations, I showed pictures of the prison to locals, who immediately told me, 'We have it here.' They brought me to school. That's what schools look like there, and it's like we shot a stamp in prison. Over the course of three months we shot two formats - a film and four episodes for a series.
"In the second week of filming, they demanded $5,000 in cash, or they closed the school gate and wouldn't let me film. Having no choice, I paid. We involved the mayor who loves Israel, and it turned out that the person who blackmailed us was the head of Antigua's crime family. I had 1,000 extras on the set, Indians from the villages. At the end of each day, I found myself sitting with a pile of cash handing out bills to them, after 14 hours of filming. It was a very difficult production, with Israeli and American investors, so I couldn't go in the middle, but I did have fear."
Eran with Daniella Kertesz, who plays Yitzhaki. "She's a crazy actress," Photo: Juan Diego
And if all this wasn't enough, the forces of nature also decided to intervene, big time. "The day before we left, there was an earthquake. We flew with the couch to the end of the room and I realized that's it, the story was over. The next day the producer was supposed to return to Israel and I accompanied him to the field, and then the volcano above the city erupted. My flight was only in four days, but it was clear to me that when I got to the airport I would buy a ticket wherever possible. There were no seats on flights, because the whole east side was closed. In the end, we found two places on a flight to Tel Aviv via Madrid and boarded it at the 90th minute."
"I fell apart on set"
After showing several companies in Los Angeles the trailer for the film, Eran will travel this month to close the deal. "We raised money from American investors and looked for the best editors for these materials. We reached out to the editors of Narcos, I worked with them in the editing rooms and then remotely at night. We already have four episodes ready and a feature and with that we will get to Los Angeles. The goal is both a movie and a miniseries on Netflix."
Sharon, how did you feel on the set of the film?
"It was very hard for me. I fell apart there, especially in the beginning. The set design was perfect, including the smell, I went into the cells there and the first thing I did was cover my nose and not smell. I got out of there quickly, and for the first few days I couldn't be there and see Daniela Kertesz filming the difficult scenes. I would look at her and not understand why a person chooses to do this to himself. It blew me away emotionally, I cried, but I was very proud of the process we went through together."
The final chapter of Sharon's storylines began with the Law of Mercy, but then came the appeal that threatened to send her back to more years in prison, and she decided to flee Bolivia.
"As soon as the appeal was accepted, I realized I had 48 hours to kill my life and cover up. There was just a holiday there and the judicial system was on vacation. De Soto gave me and my partner, who had already gotten out of prison before me, forged passports and we escaped together. We couldn't hold the girl with us and I couldn't say goodbye to her, not even from him. I'm not good at it," she smiles sadly. "At all, we don't separate there. They say, 'See you, it'll be fine.' We crossed the border and reached Brazil, and after a few months we flew from there to South Africa to meet Terry's family. In 2002, she continued with me to Israel. We lived here together for a year until we parted ways. She went back to South Africa, and I went on with my life here."
When did you realize that your story would become a book?
"When I was there, I wrote all the time. I am a person who writes, studying writing all the time. In my suitcase most of the things were diaries and notebooks, that's the most important thing for me to save. I knew I wanted a book, and a movie. The book was published in Hebrew and translated into English and became a bestseller on Amazon."
Doron: "I initiated its translation into English, and in 2021 I published it on Amazon. It was clear to me all along that there would be a movie out of it. We've been in the process for ten years. It took a long time to write a script. I auditioned for 120 actresses, including big stars, and then agent Zohar Jacobson referred me to Daniella Kertesz, who lives in Paris. At her audition, I felt like I was dead. She's a crazy actress."
22 years have passed since you returned to Israel. Were you able to get back to normal life?
"Do you think? Do you think I'm a sane person? You never come back to that, there are certain sounds that still bounce me off. I've been in therapy for many years, but it's a trauma that changes you and turns you into a different person. I live in Florentin. Today I don't have a relationship and I didn't have children - by choice. I have a knitted swimsuit design studio, which I make by hand. I started knitting in prison. It passes the time there. I developed it to levels that helped me survive and cope. After I arrived in Israel, I got a terrible kappa, and knitting and art were what kept me in myself. Really occupational therapy. My parents, brother and sister are in warm and supportive contact with me. My family is with me, and that makes me stronger."
Since the story, have you touched any drug?
"Absolutely not, I don't need it. Life is beautiful and good and freedom is good. I once read that if you control what goes into your mouth, you will control your whole life... So I'm in control."
Do you ever see yourself returning to South America?
"yes, sure, why not? Also to Bolivia."
Your whole body is covered with tattoos. What is their story?
"I started getting tattooed when I was 14. I knew I wanted my whole body covered. I slowly continued, but I saw that it wasn't going in the direction I wanted. In Israel back then it was less developed. The plan was to fly to Japan, because I'm tattooed in a traditional Japanese style, and I thought that when I had enough money I would fly there and tattoo my whole body. It is the ultimate expression in my eyes of my inner self. All my colors, my animals, the motifs that define me, and it's also a certain kind of armor that protects me all around.
"When I returned to Israel from Bolivia, the tattoo scene here was already developed enough, so I went back to the tattoo artist I started with and continued. Today I have tattoos on my upper body, arms and legs up to the knee, intending to cover everything except my face. On my back I have a huge crawling dragon, on my arms earth, fire, water and air, the spirituality in me, and on my legs motifs of ancient Egypt. In prison I was an alien. It was wow in their eyes, there was no such thing there at the time. At first they thought it had something to do with some kind of religious ritual."
Doron, what do you want to convey in this film?
"I feel that the issue here is the hopeless person standing alone against the system. It's a recurring theme in my films. Yitzhaki was hopeless, but the stars aligned for her and her life was saved. Otherwise she wouldn't be sitting here today. This transition that she made, this empowerment, from nothing and nothing to the victory over all the systems – that's what fascinated me."
Maya19.10@gmail.com
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