Comic actress Noa Koeler takes straight role in hard-hitting movie about motherhood
Baby clinics in run-down area of Haifa are the focus of award-winning film
Halisa shines a spotlight on the less palatable side of a nation obsessed with children – mothers who do not always have the resources to look after them, nurses whose duty is to police not only the health of babies but the safety of the homes where they are being raised, and women who, however capable and maternal, may not be able to conceive a child of their own.
“These are all issues I’ve had experience of,” says award-winning film-maker Sophie Artus, who intended to call her film Tipat Chalav, Hebrew for drop of milk and the name of Israel’s nationwide network of baby clinics. Ultimately, however, she named it for the rundown district of Haifa where the action of a movie every mother, actual or wannabe, will relate to, is set.
“Halisa is a mixed district where you find both Jewish and Arab mothers in the clinics, and it’s quite hard to get to – poor and a little cut off from the rest of Haifa,” says Artus, who took many of her storylines from the real-life case studies related to her by a psychologist at the neighbourhood’s actual Tipat Chalav.
The film immediately juxtaposes the tension that can arise between new mothers and vigilant staff at the baby clinics, remembering how startled she was herself at being asked to strip all the clothes off her eldest son when she brought him to see the nurse.
“Asking what the baby’s weight was, saying she needed to examine him without his clothes on to make sure he was OK – I felt like a suspect,” says the French-born writer and director who started her career as a scientist before veering into film-making. “But then I realised this nurse was just doing what she needed to do, checking the baby had not been brutalised – it was not personal; she was doing the same with all the babies”.
Artus based her story on not just her own experience – “this nurse knew I was not living near my mother and far from any close family” – but those of less privileged mothers struggling to raise their children in poverty, sometimes with crime in the background.
Artus adds dramatic interest to the story by bringing in the issue of infertility – an issue not for the mothers who visit the clinic but in Halisa a preoccupation for head nurse Sarah, a childless divorcee celebrating her 41st birthday with colleagues and a sense of desperation as the film opens. “I have two friends who wanted babies and started fertility treatment without a partner; I thought these women were really strong and brave given that it’s not easy to be a mother even when the father is present.”
The film, which was nominated for five Ophir awards and won Best Picture at the Haifa Film Festival, is a star vehicle for Israeli actress Noa Koler, appearing here as the opposite of her real self, most famous in Israel for being funny. “She’s a comic, and I thought it would be interesting to cast her in a dramatic role to bring balance to the film. It’s not an easy watch, but Noa brings a lot of good energy to it – and I hope the film shows there is not just one way to be a mother but many.”
Halisa is at the Phoenix, East Finchley on 13 November ukjewishfilm.org/event/halisa/
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