Lev Brodinsky
Project Name:
Milk & Honey
Producer:
Yael Perlov & Alma Ben-Zeev
Country:
Israel
Year of lab participation:
2022
Lab edition:
10
Logline
1993. In a government-built temporary caravan site for immigrants, Roma (13) is trying to find his place in Israeli society and create his new identity. With his family, they struggle, each in his own way, to secure a better future.
Synopsis
1993. In a government-built temporary caravan site for immigrants from the Soviet Union and Ethiopia, Roma (13) is trying to find his place in the Israeli society. Together with his family – they fight, each in his own way – to secure a better future for them towards the near dismantling of the caravan site.
At the local pool, a few of Roma's classmates discover that he has not been circumcised and humiliate him. Roma is desperate. He takes a knife and tries to circumcise himself. He is taken to the hospital to be circumcised properly. There, he is offered to change his name to an Israeli one - "Rami".
Just before the dismantling of the caravans, Roma celebrates his bar mitzvah at the site. The ceremony is over and the dancing begins. Roma dances. His face is sealed, without a smile or an expression.
Director's Note
After we immigrated to Israel and were housed in a caravan site, my biggest secret was my late circumcision. I was different and was ashamed of it. I remember the hospital, I remember the tension before the circumcision surgery, and the slow and painful recovery. A swift wave of a sharp knife, a piece of skin less and I could look up and be proud of my Judaism again. It's a story about the complexity of immigration and the price you have to pay. The loss of an old identity in order to create a new one. Sometimes at any cost.
Director-writer
Born in Moscow and Immigrated to Israel during the large immigration wave in 1991. Spent his childhood at a government-built immigrant caravan site. His First Feature Film – Milk & Honey focuses on his immigration experience. The script has received development funding.
His documentary work – "Caravan #44" was accepted to the "Van Leer Intellectual Lab".
His next short films "The General", "Pig" & "God doesn't speak Russian" have received production funding and will be completed in 2022.
Co-writer
Producer profile
Yael Perlov is a film producer and editor. She is a two-time laureate of the Israeli Film Academy Award, for editing the film Late Marriage (2001), as well as for editing & producing the film Ben-Gurion,Epilogue,(ARTE,NDR) winner as the best documentary film (2016). As well, she is the laureate of the Film Art Award of the Ministry of Education and Culture (2006).
As part of the Film Department at the Tel Aviv University, where she has been teaching for two decades, she initiated and produced Water (2012) - joint projects of Israeli and Palestinian students –that opened the Critics Week at the Venice International Film Festival and won the Amnesty Prize.
Yael has conducted the restoration of her father's films, the late David Perlov (1930-2003). Among them: Diary (in Cooperation with CNC and Centre Pompidou), Memories of Eichmann Trial (Centre Pompidou, MoMa).
Yael has been invited to teach and instruct students in various academies: VGIK Film Academy in Moscow; UCL London (2021, ongoing), and as a resident lecturer at Duke University, USA (2022).
Production company profile
Yael Perlov, Alma Ben-Zeev, Simya Films
Hateena 12, Kfar Kish 1933000. simyafilma.prod@gmail.com , +972-544821789
Production Budget
Production Budget 570,000 $
Genre:
Drama
Language:
Russian, Hebrew and Amharic