The lover of the watch robber (photo: courtesy of yes doku)
In April 1983, one of the biggest and boldest robberies the country has ever known was committed - 106 ancient clocks were stolen from the Museum of Islam in Jerusalem.
The valuable collection which was the biggest attraction of the museum in those days and among the most talked about collections in Israel, numbered more than 200 unique items from around the world.
The robber, who apparently did extensive research, stole only the most expensive watches, including a watch that belonged to Queen Marie Antoinette of France.
The total value of the stolen watches was estimated at 200 million dollars.
As you can guess, investigating the robbery became one of the main goals of the Israel Police and many resources were allocated to it.
However, she soon reached a dead end, as the collection and whoever stole it disappeared without a trace.
23 years later, in 2006, a former Israeli living in Los Angeles named Neely Shemarat emerged with the watches in her hands.
This is more or less where the plot of "The Watch Robber's Beloved" begins, Neely Tal's new film that is available to watch on Yes Doco and Sting TV.
For decades, Shetel, who recently won the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Documentary Forum, has been producing and creating films and series, the subjects of many of which are taken from the news sections.
From "The Rise and Fall of Inbal Or", through "Murder Without a Motive" about the murder of the late Assaf Steyrman to "Engraved in my Body" about the women of the cult of Goel Ratzon - all of them brought a human angle to the stories we knew only as headlines. Tal is a documentary maker of Old School - in her films there is only one star and that is the story. There are almost no editing stunts or 'cosmetic' additions. When Tal's films find a heroine like Neely Shemarat, a.k.a. the beloved of the watch thief (whose identity I will soon address), their strength is fully revealed and you will find it hard to stop Watch before you hear the full story.
The bandit Naaman Diller.
"The Beloved of the Watch Thief" (Photo: Ein Horesh Archive, courtesy of Yes Doku)
Neely Shemarat, a frail-looking woman who is no longer so young, carries "the lover of the watch thief" on her shoulders.
In her gentle voice she tells Tal's camera how decades ago she met Naaman Diller, a charismatic kibbutz member and fell head over heels in love.
Diller's hobby, stealing valuable property, was known to her relatively early in the relationship but Shemarat, who had never had any trouble with the law, stayed in touch with him.
Love, you know.
Nili Tal succeeds in weaving the love story of Shemarat and Diller into the story of the investigation of the theft in an elegant way, so that even when the end of the story is more or less understandable to the viewer from the beginning - the film still maintains tension.
Shemarat is not the only heroine in the film, beside her there is another line of 'talking heads', from Rachel Hasson who was the curator of the museum in those days to the police investigators who tried to trace the collection for years.
In the end it is the love story that steals the focus.
The affair between Shemarat and Diller (who died in 2004) was not continuous.
They were together, broke up and then came back.
In between he was in and out of prisons and she started a family with another man in Los Angeles.
However, there is no doubt that he was the man of her life.
You can see the excitement with which she talks about him to this day.
So would you believe the guard who kept stolen property worth hundreds of millions of dollars for a quarter of a century without knowing what she had in her hand?
really not sure.
What's more, with her soft speech and small eyes, Shmarat also manages to take us, the viewers, on the emotional journey she went through with Diller and suddenly we manage to feel like her the excitement of this mysterious man who managed to divert her focus from what is right to do and what is not.
Even almost twenty years after his death, Naaman Diller is the supporting hero of the film.
He does not present his version of the events (and from what can be understood he probably wouldn't tell the whole truth) but the fact that so many people are talking about him - from his kibbutz friends, through Shemarat's best friend, "colleagues" in the criminal world to the investigators who tried to get their hands on him - Strengthens his mythical status until you find yourself wondering how exactly the Autonobank became the famous thief in Israel.
"The Watch Thief's Beloved", a crime docu with the name of a cheap romance novel, is a fascinating, unique and engrossing film that, if you only give it the chance, will steal your time.
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The lover of the watch robber (photo: courtesy of yes doku)
in the small
On the border between the docu and the reality show, a new season 11 of "Trip for Five" premiered here this week, a comedy travel reality show that aired on the Trip Channel (yes, there is one) about two years ago and became a cult.
The original "Trip for Five" suffered from all the bad luck in the world, it took people out to travel the world just as it went into total lockdown and if that wasn't enough it also got the Orphan Hostel on the Travel Channel, but if you watched it you know it was close to perfect.
Hanit, Carmit, Rachel, Jaber and Amit - five Israelis full of motivation to become famous and a little less self-aware were sent to Naples where they were asked to take each other on two organized trips and then point each other (behind the back of course).
It was the version of "Let's Eat With Me" that we didn't know we needed and even though it didn't have the wonderful narration of Shai Avivi and Dikla Kidar it still worked.
Here, as mentioned, they recognized the potential (all the articles about the "cult in the making" certainly didn't hurt) and brought "Trip to Five" to them with the same creators and the same graphic packaging.
Ummm, this time the contestants are staying in the country to give each other tours in our beautiful country.
And the result?
Sad as the situation in the country.
The castings here try to be accurate but miss a lot, yes, there's Katrina whose father was an oligarch but she doesn't like money and Esti whose father wasn't an oligarch but rather likes money and a couple of YouTubers who haven't opened a book since their days but the lack of chemistry is noticeable from afar.
Bottom line, after watching three episodes of "Trip to Five" the only smile that came up was as soon as the episode ended and that means Drashni.
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Yehuda Nahari
Guy Pines
