Coming soon: Lior Raz’s forbidden romance with a Kapo
In May Seret international Israeli Film Festival brings the Fauda star and the best of Israel's cinema to the UK
Brigit Grant is the Jewish News Supplements Editor
A blink of an eye ago, Israel’s creative content was circling the globe. Outside-the-box thinking and original concepts from gifted writers, directors and actors saw Israeli productions in their original language become as popular as their international remakes. It is incredible that the horror and tragedy of that October day would impact on the victim country.
All the more reason to circle Seret International Israeli Film Festival on your calendar (8-15 May) so you see the compelling cinema that the misguided and misinformed won’t. Top of the list is Roy Assaf’s Cabaret Total, in which Israel’s most sought-after choreographer directs and stars, playing Assi, a combat soldier returning home from war with post-traumatic stress disorder.
A drama teacher at a high school, Assi also does cabaret at the community centre, but it is his performance in the classroom decrying army service that goes viral, prompting his dismissal, cancellation and a political fray. Choreographers bring a distinctive vision to directing as Bob Fosse’s Cabaret proved and Assaf echoes his style in this anti-establishment film that took seven years to make and premieres when his country, like his character, is worn down by war.
Using garish clowns as Fellini did in 8½, the dancer who has seamlessly graduated to actor/director has made a critical masterpiece that dares to criticise. Seret’s Odelia Haroush is very excited about Cabaret Total and has equally high hopes for Halisa, Sophie Artus’ unusual take on the desire to be a mother, and Erez Tadmor’s Soda, which takes place in 1956 in a Holocaust survivor community, where a seamstress arrives and is revealed as a Kapo, which presents a dilemma for the resistance fighter torn between attraction and exposing her history. Fauda’s Lior Raz plays the fighter, and as a side note he is about to start production on the fifth season of the drama which shot him to fame.
Circle Seret on your calendar. From 8 –15 May. seretfilmfestival.org
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