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"Jewish friends cursed Arabs and I was silent. I even nodded in agreement. It ate me up."

His Jewish partner who broke his heart, his father who almost died of cancer, his anger at Mansour Abbas and overcoming the fear of losing Jewish friends ("I once feared they would stop being friends because of my views"): Actor Louis Nofi starring in the series "Naps" (HOT) talks about Fauda and about That there is no difference between the Irgun and the Palestinians. Interview

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• Naps - Series

• Louis Nofi

Sagi Ben Nun

Thursday, 25 March 2021, 00:00 Updated: 14:02

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Excerpt from the "Naps" series starring Louis Nofi (courtesy of HOT)

The corona year was very difficult for actor Louis Nofi, during which he also separated from his partner, also dealt with his father's serious illness and also suffered great difficulties in earning a living.

"It has been a very emotionally shaky year," he says in an interview with Walla!

culture.

"I am now being photographed for a film, the filming of which was renewed after they were stopped at the beginning of the corona. This year I did not work at all, except for two days of filming for the 'IPS' series here.

Before the Corona I made a living from both playing and working in the nightlife, but the Corona took both the culture and the nightlife.

So it was very difficult in terms of earning a living.

"" In addition, the last year has been emotionally difficult for me because during that time I also broke up with the love of my life, after we were together for a year, and also because I was three months with my dad in hospital.

Leukemia returned to him in a boom.

Leukemia in principle is something chronic that can be lived with but it has appeared to him in a rare condition that the doctors have not encountered, that has lowered his immune system to zero and failed to lift it back.

Then he had infections, bacteria in his blood, and he was constantly hospitalized for isolation and no one could enter him except us.

A week before he was hospitalized he was still climbing on rooftops and giving quotes for a tiled roof, and suddenly in one moment he ran out and became a nurse.

He was on the verge of death.

Twice I was told to get ready.

Tried all sorts of drugs on him.

And thank God, he came out of it miraculously. "

Nofi paused and thought." It was a really difficult experience.

But you know what, I was also lucky to have Corona, because because of her I did not have a job, so I was able to leave home in Tel Aviv, come to be with Dad a lot in a hospital in Afula and also help my brothers.

The timing of the corona in this regard was a twist. "

After a difficult year, now much better for 36-year-old Louis Nofi, who is remembered for the" Zaguri Empire "and" Dumb "series, among other things. By HOT, created and directed by Meyslon Hamud, who signed the successful and award-winning film "Not Here Not There." This is a comedic crime drama that tells the story of Arab students in 2008 who try to create a new Palestinian community in Tel Aviv. The story begins with a trio of friends, Warda, Case And Salah, are involved in a drug deal with a Palestinian crime family in Jaffa, which complicates them with the local criminal world, the police and their families, along with Nofi Abd al-Hadi, Riyad Suleiman, Ayman Dao, Ala Daka, Shai Avivi, Hisham Suleiman and Salim Dow. , Which seems to have been inspired by the films of Trentino and the Cohen brothers, airs on Thursdays on HOT3 and is also available on HOT VOD.

More on Walla!

Even if "Naps" is lame at times, the magic and its main star cover everything

To the full article

"Hard year."

Louis Nofi (Photo: one-time use, Tal Shahar, Yedioth Ahronoth)

"I have known Meislon for many years, even before her break-in," Nofi recalled.

"We met in Tel Aviv's nightlife, we also worked together at the same bar in Jaffa. When I flew to LA she started working on 'Not Here and Not There', and then she broke out with her stunning film. They made her full of problems because sometimes when you come and show in front of people "It is difficult for people to accept this look. But it is good that they put a mirror in front of people's face. It puts a mirror on the chauvinism that in our society is several times greater.

What is similar and what is different between you and your character, the Sheriff Cop known as the "Sheriff Sheriff"?

"The truth is we are very far from each other, but I like to make characters who are far from me. What they have in common is the distance from home, and the desire to make parents proud of me. The sheriff has the heavy shadow of a father who was a great police chief, who pushed him to be a policeman. Wanted to be.I also want my dad to be proud of me.At first my dad did not believe in the game world, and told me 'if you are a player you will be poor all your life'. There's always this thing of proving to Dad that I succeeded. The difference between me and the character, that I succeed On my own, in something I want to do, and not acting or stepping into the shoes of someone who was a great commander. "

You play in the cop series.

In reality, you are arrested at least twice for drug use.

"I do not like the police. Every law enforcement body - I do not connect with it. I prefer not to mess with them. I had an experience of harassment with them. Once, during the Eitan cliff, after a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv, the police searched my house and found drugs, took I was taken to the station and arrested. I do not understand why, it was a personal use. A case was opened against me. This was the second time the police arrested me for drugs. The first time was also because of abuses. When I studied at Beit Zvi, the police ambushed students outside the school in Ramat Gan. And caught me. "

In the third episode of the series, Case says: "It's not easy to be an Arab in the city, especially since you have no one but yourself from here. And I ask myself - who is the real Case? The hipster in Tel Aviv, the shit, or the 'Taibawi' (Taibeh resident). His mother's son? ". How do you connect to this sentence?

" The truth is that it is a sentence that I very much connect to.

Lately I have been very much thinking about this matter.

Because I'm a bit of a Tel Aviv hipster, because the nightlife here is my life for years.

This is a very beautiful bubble.

But I keep thinking about Nazareth, the mother, where I came from.

Sometimes it makes you forget where I came from.

Suddenly the desire to get out of the beautiful Tel Aviv bubble and cultivate the memory of where I came from burns in me anew.

I struggle with myself from within, asking myself where I am now, what I really want.

"Sometimes all this liberalism makes you forget what's going on with your brothers, what's going on around you and what's going on in the country itself."

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"A bit of a Tel Aviv hipster."

Louis Nofi (Photo: one-time use, Tal Shahar, Yedioth Ahronoth)

At what prominent moment in your life did the conflict between your identities intensify?

"It happened to me several times in LA, when I connected with Israeli guys who are far right. They would talk, and say things that are against Arabs and Palestinians, and I in these places I would not object. And it ate me from the inside. I did not speak, I kept my mouth shut or even I nodded as if I agreed with them. I did not confront them because I was there alone, and these are the first guys who came to me. We connected even before I knew what their opinions were, and somewhere I was dependent on them. My survival became dependent on them. They helped me there. It's something very "It bothered me that sometimes I put aside the place I came from, for a less important purpose. I am somewhere else now. For the past year or two, I have been trying to fix myself."

You once said, "Arabs look at you as a traitor, and Jews as a type B."

Do you still feel that way?

"Yes. Although in my environment, in terms of my Jewish friends, I do not feel that way. I feel that way in terms of what the state does, the incitement that the government does and how it causes people to behave, I obviously suffer. From the Arab side, there are those who think I am never cheating I defined myself as a Palestinian, so maybe they thought I was Israeli, living a liberal life and not cursing the Jews. "

You had more Jewish than Arab companies.

"True. My ex, who was the love of my life, is Jewish. But it's not related. I look at a person in front of me. It sucks that people try to deny you love on religious grounds, because love is love, it's fire and life and the world. In adult life there was only society And half of them are Arabs, and the rest are non-Arabs - some are Jewish and there was one American. "

More on Walla!

"Not Here Not There": Interview with Cute Meislon and Shaden Canberra

To the full article

"Not connecting with the police."

Louis Nofi in HOT's "Naps" series (Photo: PR)

Nofi, one of the most talented, esteemed and busy Arab actors in the country, was born in January 1985 in Nazareth to a Christian family that has been in the city for 14 generations.

Following a theater class at the school, he left to live in Tel Aviv at the age of 18 and teach acting at Beit Zvi.

After graduating, he starred in the film "The Lemon Tree" by Eran Riklis, and since then has appeared in many productions including the series "Asfur", "Fishing", "Dumb", "Arab Work", "IPS", "The Good Cop" and "Stockholm" The films "Staying Alive", "Dancing Arabs", "Darkness", "Rock in the Casbah", "A Bottle in the Sea of ​​Gaza", and the play "A Thousand and One Nights" on Habima

You said in the past that you did not participate in "Fauda" because Slash terrorist.

Do not want an Arab with a stigma. "So why did you agree to play a terrorist in" Middle East Center "?

" First of all, 'Middle East Center' was a parody, and not like 'Fauda' at all.

Let me do the cool roles, why show only this side of the Arabs when you have a lot of other sides of the Arabs that you can come and show?

It probably works well for suspense and action.

I'll tell you something, I have no problem now doing 'Fauda', depending on what the role is and what it represents. "

Actress Maisa 'Abd al-Hadi, your partner in the series' Nafs', said in an interview last week that she gave up a role in' Fauda '." When I read the script I did not believe in the magnitude of the propaganda and lies there, "she said.

" I have not read the scripts and have not yet seen 'Fauda'.

I'm pretty sure Maisa knows what she's talking about, because she's much sharper and sharper than I am.

If they offer me a good role in 'Fauda', for example, which shows the parties, where it comes from and why and what makes and motivates the person to work ... "To

work in terrorism you mean.

" I do not know if it is terrorism.

If someone took down the fireplace, killed his father and destroyed his house, and he could not go back?

Probably every other person who was in his place, whether he was Muslim, Jewish or Christian, would come and want to protect his family and home and land, to restore dignity, to be liberated, not to be a slave and not to be closed.

Even during the British Mandate here, the Irgun and the Lehi took similar actions to what is happening now.

So what is the difference between a man who protects his family or his land, what did the Irgun and the Lehi do?

What is the difference between what they did and what the Palestinians are doing now?

Every person whose family is killed wants to fight and protect.

I wish it could have been solved in another way. "

Surprisingly, until the age of 30, Nofi did not vote in the election except once. In this week's election, he could not vote because he was in the filming in Jordan." Basa I could not vote for the joint list as I wanted, "he says. , "In the previous election I voted for Gantz, just because I wanted Bibi to go.

In the end, Ganz also betrayed us.

It's a feeling of great disappointment from him, and it's a shame I gave him the vote instead of voting for the joint list or for Meretz.

Everything went well. "

More on Walla!

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"An opaque, obscure and loser man."

Mansour Abbas (Photo: Shlomi Gabay)

In the movie "The Story That Never Ends" the sentence appears: "It is easy to control hopeless people."

Is this also true of the Netanyahu regime?

"Yes. Hope has been lost. This is a mission that Netanyahu has succeeded in."

And the loss of hope is the reason for the decline in the percentage of votes in the Arab sector?

"Yes. It sucks. And unfortunately some of our leaders are spineless. Forgetting the past and what interests them is their personal interests, we are irrelevant to them. Unfortunately they sold us."

What do you think of the positions of MK Mansour Abbas, chairman of the RAAM party, who did not rule out a meeting in the government with Netanyahu?

"Abbas is an opaque, obscure and loser.

The whole ideology of his party is against liberalism and against accepting the other.

Only after they left the joint list was I ready to give my voice to the joint.

There is no logical move for Abbas, it is in his personal interest.

I do not understand how Bibi bought it, maybe with money or benefits.

In terms of ideology Abbas and Bibi are opposed, how can they sit together?

And how can Abbas sit with Ben Gvir?

"Perhaps his common denominator with the far right is their positions against the LGBT community? How does he agree to go with Bibi, after Bibi said 'the Arabs are flocking' and at every opportunity hurts the Arabs? I hoped Abbas would not pass the blocking percentage."

So Mansour Abbas will disappoint you, to say the least.

And other Arab MKs are you satisfied?

"We Hadash party. This party I vote for her even in municipal elections. Ayman Odeh is the only politician I believe in. I have problems with the others. He was able to keep the joint list did not fall apart."

He once refused to play Fauda because he did not want to play a terrorist.

Today agrees (Photo: Neti Levy, courtesy of yes)

In this interview you are not afraid to express your political opinion.

In previous interviews you seemed scared.

What caused the change?

"You're right. I used to have fears that I might lose my Jewish friends if I say my opinion. Today I think that if someone stops talking to me because I say my opinion - he's probably not really my friend. Today I'm less afraid to talk about it. ".

The interview with Louis Nofi takes place in a telephone conversation from Jordan, in which he is filmed for the comedy film "A Gaza Weekend" by director Bassel Khalil, a Palestinian-British native of Nazareth.

The plot describes a severe epidemic of a virus that underwent a mutation that struck Israel, and because of which people are fleeing the country to the closed and isolated Gaza Strip, the only uninfected and safest place in the region.

Interestingly, the plot was conceived by director Khalil several years before the outbreak of the corona plague.

"The filming of the film was stopped a year ago, at the beginning of the Corona," he says.

"Now we are back to filming the cool comedy in Jordan instead of in a country where it was impossible to film because of all kinds of bureaucracies."

You are now in Jordan.

This is a reminder that Netanyahu has severely damaged relations between Israel and Jordan, and it has been argued that Netanyahu is an undesirable figure in Jordan.

"It sucks. Why should there be a unilateral peace? Why can we enter Jordan but it's very difficult for them to enter? It's not fair that Bibi does what he does. Bibi is Bibi, and all he does is cover his ass. Look how he shot the The people".

More on Walla!

The good one also wins: Zehava Ben's exciting win in "Big Brother" is a wonderful ending to a horrible corona year

To the full article

Louis Nofi and Kobi Maimon in the "Zaguri Empire" series (Photo: screenshot, courtesy of HOT)

Your resume is very rich, and despite your excellent Hebrew and your ability to almost completely eliminate the Arabic accent - you were cast in a Jewish role only twice, and in one of them it was the role of an Arabic-speaking Jew - you narrated Eli Cohen's voice in a documentary about him here 11.

"True I only got to be a Jew twice. Eli Cohen is because he spoke Arabic. And I also played a Jew at the station. This is a production of my agency ADD, so it was perhaps less difficult to get the job. Unfortunately, they are still afraid to take a risk for an Arab cast to portray a Jew. "And he filled television and film, it's a pity it's the same in the theater. There are maybe two or three Arab actors who play Jews in the Israeli theater. You'd think Shakespeare wrote 'Hamlet' so that only English-speaking people would play it."

Participating in a foreign production is reminiscent of a time when I was trying to be successful in Los Angeles.

How disappointed were you and what did you still gain from this period?

"What I got from this experience is that I am a human being, that in any situation, wherever you throw me - I will survive. Even in the shit of shit I still survived and managed to get out of it. But there was disappointment there, because I came to pick up my career. Although I came on my own, and no one asked "Me there, which makes it a thousand times harder. I was not given the artist's visa to work. It took a year and three months until I was told I would not get a visa."

Louis Nofi in HOT's "Naps" series (Photo: courtesy of the photographers, Louis Nofi)

Your face is more familiar to the Jewish public than to the Arabs.

Is it a coincidence or not?

"It seems to me that this is true. Not all Arabs have yes and HOT. The Arabs in the country do not watch much of the Israeli industry. Therefore, they will probably recognize my face more on the Israeli side. But I feel that recently I am getting to know the Arab public better."

What do you regret?

And what are you especially proud of?

"I regret that I did not invest more in my Arabness - in Arab culture and literature. I regret letting my bubble in Tel Aviv put my Arabism to sleep for a moment. But it wakes up again. And I say extortionately that I can connect different people in coexistence and love, which I create in my environment And in my friends and optimism. "

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