"When there is a good film, the audience arrives": Israeli Cinema Day returns

Only about a month after we celebrated Israeli Cinema Day, it will return again next Wednesday (8.12) with 31 Israeli films that can be seen for only ten shekels, including "Perfect Strangers" by Lior Ashkenazi, who in a special interview admits "I am compulsive in every word written about the film"

Avner Shavit

02/12/2021

Thursday, 02 December 2021, 07:06 Updated: 07:31

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Trailer for the movie "Perfect Strangers" (United King)

The miracle of the oil jug of local cinema: Israeli Cinema Day, which usually takes place only once a year, will return next week, and again the audience will be able to watch a variety of films made in Israel for only ten shekels. It will take place on Wednesday 8.12 in theaters across the country. The price of course does not include an online booking fee, popcorn and the like, and entry is of course subject to the green label rules.

One of these films will be "Perfect Foreigners", the Hebrew-speaking adaptation of the Italian hit, which premiered on the previous day of cinema, and has since gone on to be widely distributed in commercial circulation and has already sold about 100,000 tickets - an impressive achievement in the days of the Corona.

As you may recall, this is Lior Ashkenazi's first feature film as a director, who this time preferred to stay behind the camera only.

"True, there are those who have not yet returned to cinema after the Corona, but when there is a good film people go out to see it. Not only 'Perfect Strangers' succeeds but also 'The Father' and the new James Bond," he says.

"One hundred thousand in three weeks is an impressive figure. What surprised me the most was the viewing figures of youth and soldiers. The film speaks a little more bourgeois language and older than them, and yet they connect to it. The biggest fear of all of us is that someone will poke us on the phone, as happens with him. "

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"When there is a good movie, people leave the house."

From "Perfect Strangers" (Photo: David Scurry)

Ashkenazi admits in his iniquities that he reads every comma written about the film. "Someone wrote on Twitter that we did nothing, we just took the Italian film as it is and added Hebrew dubbing to it," he says. "It turned out he had not watched the film at all. I asked him if he happened to be Miri Regev in disguise."

"I compulsively read every critique, every comment and tweet. It's important for me to understand and hear what people think, but I also have enough experience to know when it's a matter-of-fact critique and when it should be filtered."

"It was important to me that the characters speak in full consciousness. In the Italian film, the character I play Rotem Abohav erupts at her husband because she is an alcoholic and speaks out of drunkenness. For me, she does it soberly."

"In the original film, there is a character of a homophobe, and that's something that does not sound right to me for the Israel of 2021. Maybe I'm disconnected, but homophobia is rare in my districts. Because it's unpleasant to find out that your good friend has been lying to you for years. "

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Reads every word written about the film.

Lior Ashkenazi (Photo: Reuven Castro)

Ashkenazi is currently residing in London, where he photographed Golda ", a film by Guy path of Helen Mirren stars as Golda Meir and Israeli actor as Dado Elazar, the chief of staff of the tragic Yom Kippur War.

" I was supposed to do below projection of perfect strangers 'Last weekend, but was not yet ready with an English translation.

"We will probably do it next weekend and I promise to update what she said."

"At Golda's I would probably find a lot of messages to friends returning from England to bring her Chesterfield cigarettes. At Dado's it must have been more interesting already."

Meir Garner, star of "Africa", with his son Oren, the film's director, after winning awards at the Haifa Film Festival (Photo: Ziv Amar)

From Africa to Israeli Cinema Day

In addition to "Perfect Strangers", thirty more films will be screened as part of this day, one of which was not screened on the previous cinema day - "Africa", Oren Garner's first feature film, shot in his parents' community, and they themselves do not star in it Looks documentary. The script and camera focus on the director's father, who is having a hard time finding himself at retirement age, and the question that arises is whether he was able to fulfill his dreams, or whether his life remained an unrealized fantasy? Does the trip to the Black Continent, as the film is called, symbolize the miraculous adventures he has accumulated, or the distance left between him and his ambitions?

Cinema Day takes place about a month after the Israeli Oscars, in which the big winner was "Let there be morning".

Eran Kolirin's film is based on Sayed Kashua's book about a Palestinian village under siege by the IDF. As usual, many criticized the film without watching it, and the irony is that unlike most Israeli works, which are just pseudo-leftists, this is a poignant , which has strongly criticized Israel, but the Palestinian society. In short: Expect it, and we'll have a lot to talk about.

great rival of "Let there be morning" was "picture of victory" by Avi Nesher, like the previous films, is expected to become blockbuster Once widely circulated, it is also a political film set against the backdrop of the 1948 war, and from my impressions of its previous pre-premieres, the local audience is swept inside, chained to a chair throughout the screening and ending it in tears.

Ophir Awards for Israeli Cinema Day.

From "Let There Be Morning" (Photo: Dori Media)

The younger generation

Amir Manor's "The House on Finn Street", which won Raymond Amsalem the Best Actress Award at the recent Ophir Awards, and Pini Tabger's "More Than Me", which was nominated at the ceremony in several categories, including the various acting awards, for their work will also be screened. Of Anna Dubrovitsky, Micha Prudovsky and Yaakov Zada ​​Daniel.

Hadas Ben Aroya and Tom Shoval are the senior representatives of the younger generation of Israeli cinema. They both completed their second feature film this year. Ben Aroya's "Someone Will Love Someone" deals with the pains of young men and women in Tel Aviv, and Shoval's "Remove Worry from Your Heart" is a Hebrew and English-language social satire inspired by Buñol's classics and starring Bernice Bezo in France, which broke out a decade ago in "The Artist" Won an Oscar. Both were premiered at the Jerusalem Festival last summer and shared the main prize in the Israeli plot competition, and are now coming to pre-premieres.

In the previous edition of the Jerusalem Festival the big winners were Danny Rosenberg's "The Death of the Cinema and My Dad too", starring Roni Koben in his first film role - and "Here We Are" by Nir Bergman based on a screenplay by Dana Idisis ("On the Spectrum") starring him Of Shai Avivi.

The two have been raising dust for quite some time and have even managed to win commercial distribution in France, where they were praised, but have not yet been screened here, and Israeli Cinema Day will be an opportunity to watch them in pre-premiere screenings until it finally happens.

In this context we will also mention Yevgeny Roman's "Background Voices", one of the best films made here about the Russian aliyah, which came up in the United States about a month ago but not yet here, and will also be shown in a pre-premiere.

Young people in Tel Aviv.

From "Someone will love someone" (Photo: Meidan Arma)

From Amos Gitai to "Release Shuli"

Two docu-films about leading artists who died prematurely will also be shown. The first is "Anat Gov, on life and death" by Tamar Tal produced by HOT 8, which has been showing in theaters for a long time, and the second is "Black Notebooks - Vivian" by Shlomi Alkabetz produced here 11, which will be released immediately after its screenings as part of Israeli Cinema Day.

The film celebration will feature in pre-premiere screenings several films with a rich, intriguing and often also eclectic casting, to say the least. Danny Reisfeld's "Don't Wait for Me" stars Omar Hazan, Taylor Malkov, Einat Shroff and Israel Oglebo; Marco Carmel's "Paris Boutique" boasts Benali Tagar and Morris Cohen; Eran B.Y.'s "Marriage" flaunts Dean Marshnikov, Anat Waxman, Leah Schnirer and Michael Lewis; "Snowland" by Yoni Zichholtz presents Uri Pepper, Shlomi Kuriat and Tali Sharon; And "Aspiration for Life" is a summit meeting of several screen legends and in fact a cinematic mini-incarnation of "That's It". Gov and Moshonov are missing, but Brava,Debbie Glickman and Avi Kushnir here, as well as Gadi Yagil.

We will also mention Amos Gitai's "Night in Haifa", which, as usual, recruits talent and spends it on an invisible film.

This time the victims are Hannah Leslau (who appears in only one scene), Naama Price, Tzachi Halevi, Maria Zarik, Clara and Makram Khoury and more.

In Doron Eran's "The Last Hour of Mr. Cole", a kind of cinematic solo show, however, there is only one actor - Ohad Shachar.

Few Israeli films have been released since the Corona, and even fewer have been successful at the box office.

On the hits shelf, one can mainly mention "Release My Edge" and to a lesser extent "Another Story", Guri Alfi's first film as a director, and both will also be shown in this festive setting.

If you have not seen it yet.

From "Release My Edge" (Photo: Eyal Rapalov)

Other films in this category are Nadav Lapid's "The Knee," which won the Jury Prize at Cannes but was less commercially successful; "One in the Heart" by Talia Lavie starring Ran Danker, probably the most prolific Israeli artist of the past year, who was not as successful as her previous film, "Zero in Human Relations"; Gidi Der's Legend of Destruction, an animated film about the destruction of the house, which was crowned as a groundbreaking masterpiece by critics but did not reach its box office potential; And "See You in Joy," Michael Meir's brilliant horror thriller starring Michael Aloni and Liraz Hammi. Everyone will try to win a new life.

In this context we will mention four more films, all of which are suitable for the whole family. Prominent among them is the "raft" of Oded Raz, which due to the corona damage did not receive the respect it deserved. This is one of the most beautiful and believable children's films made in Israel, and I hope that this time it will resonate even more.

The other three are Kobi Mehat's "Paul Speed", the pledge of "Paul Gaz", which preceded him in better days and then gained greater popularity;

The adaptation of the classic tale "Hanhala's Shabbat Dress" starring none other than Michal the Little and Hani Nachmias, as well as the nature film "Kinneret - Sea of ​​Life".

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