• culture

• Theater

"Israel is my second home. I'm glad my film is distributed to you"

After winning Emmy for "Ozark", Julia Garner is doing the best cinematic role so far in "Personal Assistant", which will be released this weekend (yes yes). In a special interview, she talks about the importance of the film, which deals with MeToo, and to differentiate about the warm connection with her Israeli family

Tags

• Julia Garner

• Ozark

• The Americans

• Berlin Festival

• METOO

Avner Shavit, Berlin

Wednesday, 28 April 2021, 00:00 Updated: 10:04

• Share on Facebook

• Share on WhatsApp

• Share on general

• Share on general

• Share on Twitter

• Share on Email

0 comments

• Shai Lehemi Chef Games

• Excerpts from a "fact" investigation of Yehuda Meshi ...

• Tzipi Refaeli are connected

• Itzik Zohar is a winning VIP couple

• Corinne Gideon to Triumph

• The series "Bnei Or", Yishai Lalosh

• Michael Sheeran Sapir A winning couple

• Sonia Volger, "For All Mankind"

• Miko Jamal

• Suspension Source Staff

• Ati Schulberg A pair of Iggy conductors

Trailer for the movie "Personal Assistant" (Red Cape)

Eight years ago, a funny thing happened to me: I went to the premiere of "We Are What We Are," a horror film that was screened as a side-frame at the Cannes Film Festival. In the lead role, he introduced a young and budding actress named Julia Garner, who left a great impression. When the screening ended, I went to compliment her, and when I added where I came from, the star dropped a bombshell: in English mixed in Hebrew, she told me that her mother's name was Tami Gingold, an Israeli who also appeared in movies and television, including "This Is It", until she left the country in the 1980s and settled in Amar.

"I consider myself semi-Israeli," she told me later, as we sat down for a more formal conversation. "I have a lot of family in the country: in fact, my mother's whole family is there, and I come to visit often." After I posted the article on social media and issued a call to search for relatives, it took exactly half an hour until her family contacted me, and turned out to be as charming as she was.

In the eight years since, Garner has become a promising yet fairly anonymous actress and a well-known and esteemed star.

This is mainly due to two series - "The Americans" (whose sixth season has just joined the HOT catalog), in which she played Kimberly;

And "Ozark," in which she played the character of Ruth Langmore - a role that won her two Emmy Awards.

She will soon be seen in "Re-Inventing Anna," Shonda Reims' new series on Netflix.

Garner has also appeared in several films, such as "Grandma" and the sequel to "Sin City."

In the past year she has added "Personal Assistant" to the list, her best and most challenging cinematic role to date.

The film was screened at three prestigious festivals - Telluride, Sundance and Berlin - and will be screened in Israel this coming weekend.

Yes, you heard right - most cinemas here are closed until further notice, but it will be shown in some of the few that are still open, for example the Tel Aviv Cinematheque and the Movieland chain.

More on Walla!

Our first interview with Julia Garner

To the full article

Waiting for another award, and another visit.

Julia Garner with Emmy (Photo: GettyImages, Rachel Murray)

As the name of the film implies, Garner plays a personal assistant to a senior in the entertainment world, who turns out to be the son of Harvey Weinstein - and many other annoying predators, so she finds herself a witness to his criminal actions.

I met Garner after the screening at the Berlin Festival in the winter of 2020, just before the Corona.

"The last three years have been the most intense in my life," she told me.

"I'm in filming every day, I'm always doing something, and I'm tired of ever. The only people who can understand how tired I am are people who have children," she concluded, and probably could not have guessed that a few weeks later she would have a forced rest following the plague.

"Personal Assistant" was written and directed by Kitty Green, which is her debut work, and is proving to be American cinema's first successful deal with Metoo. Beyond its intensity and the quality of the gameplay, this drama is noteworthy because it manages to place the events in a broad gender-economic-class context, and describe how the sex offenders used their power to whitewash their exploits, exposing those who witnessed them to an impossible choice: Shut up, or talk and lose the opportunity to maintain the livelihood they so desperately need.

"In terms of subject matter, it's definitely my most important film," Garner says when I ask her about the importance of this drama. "However, I feel like throughout my career I have been able to say 'no' to unimportant things. I invest so much energy in everything I do, so it's always important to me to make sure the projects justify the energy, so I feel like everything I did was important. "Ozark", for example - this series says so much about the classes in the United States. "

And "personal assistant" also has the class interest.

"True, the men above the main character exploit her, but they themselves are exploited by the boss. It's a matter of hierarchies. It's not just a story about sexual exploitation, but about exploitation in the workplace in general. The film talks about the method, not the individuals working within it. "There was in them, it could have been solved a long time ago, but the matter is much deeper - the real disease is the method that is a fertile ground for exploitation. Not only the big boss is not alone: ​​he is surrounded by other men who are part of the system and do nothing to stop it."

Just before the corona.

Julia Garner at the Berlin 2020 Festival (Photo: GettyImages, Matthias Nariak)

We never see what the exploitative boss looks like. Did you build a picture of him in your head?

"I loved this artistic choice. Here and there I may have imagined what he looked like, but mostly I was preoccupied with my character and how she felt - the conflict between wanting to do her job and keep it, and the feeling of being exploited. This occupation filled me so much, that it was not I really have time to think about other things. "

How do you compare your character here and in "Ozark"?

"In 'Ozark' my character has a lot of lines, and I speak very fast and with an accent. Here, my character says almost nothing, but it was equally challenging, just in a different way. I felt like I was playing a silent film, and I had to convey everything Through my facial expressions. "

How did your character feel here?

"I always feel what my character feels, and this time what I felt was very difficult. She was lonely, so I also felt very alone, even though I had no reason - everyone in the photos hugged me, and in my personal life I have nothing to complain about."

You're been on the screens for about a decade.

What is the most important lesson you have learned?

"How to disassemble a script. It often takes you a long time to shoot scene 17 in the first week and then only two weeks later in scene 15. I learned that I have to re-read everything every time, even if I have already read the script five times, and internalize how to maintain its emotional continuity as well. When you photograph it in a fragmented way. "

"Like playing a silent movie."

Julia Garner in "Ozark" (Photo: Red Cape)

The conversation with Garner takes place face-to-face, with no one else around the table, and naturally slides into personal points as well. "I was never exploited and I was never in a production that was exploited," she says. "But I've heard a lot of stories about it, and not just from the film industry. There's a whole world outside the film world, and unfortunately bad things happen there too."

We first and most recently met seven years ago. How do those seven years feel to you - like seventy years? Like seven days?

"Everything's so crazy, these are not things you can prepare for. You will never say to yourself 'I can not wait for my mother to win.' You do not think about these things, you focus on work. I am super happy with how everything worked out, I would not want That something will change and happen more slowly or faster. "

Garner announces that "we are from the same tribe" and upon hearing the news that the film was purchased for distribution in Israel, is quick to add - "I am really happy about every film of mine that is screened in Israel. This is my second home. "

Did you get to see Israeli products?

"Yes, Israelis grasp things quickly and they are good at producing content that will be the basis for remakes. I really like 'Fauda' and also 'In Treatment'."

"We are from the same tribe."

Julia Garner (Photo: GettyImages, Emma McKinter)

I tell her that I will soon be flying back to Israel to vote in the third round of the election - without knowing, of course, that within a year there will also be a fourth round.

"Everything in the world is very extreme, even in Israel," she says.

"It was not like that once. Israel was once a socialist state and now ... but it is like that everywhere in the world."

What do you wish for yourself?

"I would like to trust the universe a little more. I'm still working on it."

• Share on Facebook

• Share on WhatsApp

• Share on general

• Share on general

• Share on Twitter

• Share on Email

0 comments