Israeli director Hillel Fee’s drama The Good Fence, set towards the backdrop of a right-wing non secular settlement, has gained the $50,000 Grand Prize for the twelfth version of the Jerusalem Sam Spiegel Worldwide Movie Lab.
The characteristic revolves across the antagonistic relationship between a right-wing non secular settler father and his son, who rejects his non secular upbringing and joins an excessive left-wing group.
Fee, who describes himself as a no-longer-practicing Jew raised in a non secular residence, has taken inspiration from occasions in his personal life, and the stress he skilled together with his late father after he selected a unique life from that of his mother and father.
“The Good Fence portrays the conflicted relationship between a father and son within the settlements, within the wake of a household tragedy. It avoids easy solutions whereas trying unblinkingly on the most complicated problems with our time,” mentioned Austrian Movie Institute CEO Roland Teichmann, who headed the worldwide jury.
He was joined by Belgian producer Diana Elbaum and 30West co-president Daniel Steinman, who additionally sat in on pitching classes on the Sam Spiegel Movie and Tv College in Jerusalem on July 19.
The Good Fence is produced by Lev Orlov at Tel Aviv-based Lev Orlov Movies. The characteristic might be Fee’s first characteristic after well-travelled shorts Inside His Passions, My Father’s Son and Paperock.
In different prizes, the $20,000 Sam Spiegel Worldwide Movie Lab Rising Filmmaker Award went to Omer Ben-David and Vera Grinblat’s Who Lives There? a few 15-year-old woman dealing who is shipped to a strict non secular college. It’s produced by Estee Meckelberg at 2-Workforce Productions.
“Via an unforgettable portrait of an adolescent studying to navigate the social corridors of her non secular boarding college, Who Lives There? explores the sacrifices we typically should make in the middle of defending ourselves, and the way we recuperate from them,” learn the jury assertion.
The successful initiatives have been amongst 12 movies – cut up equally between Israeli and worldwide initiatives – taking part within the twelfth version of the lab.
Worldwide initiatives within the version included Hungarian director Dénes Nagy’s The Trip and Deep Love by Netherlands duo Emily Reekers and Sophie Dros.
Previous participant initiatives have included Lazlo Nemes’s Academy Award successful Son of Saul and Cannes Digital camera d’Or winner Murina by Antoneta Kusijanović.
Historically coinciding with the Jerusalem Worldwide Movie Pageant, operating from July 18 to twenty-eight this yr, the ultimate pitching classes are often attended by a contingent of worldwide movie professionals.
As a result of ongoing Israel-Gaza struggle, the presence of worldwide company was scaled again this yr, with the pitching session run as a hybrid bodily and on-line occasion.
“The Sam Spiegel Movie College and Worldwide Movie Lab domesticate distinctive, groundbreaking filmmakers whereas offering them the chance to achieve numerous audiences,” mentioned Dana Blankstein Cohen, govt director of the Sam Spiegel Movie and Tv College.
“Particularly in these difficult instances, and regardless of the occasions unfolding round us, we’re making nice efforts and are decided to proceed to permit freedom of expression and inventive independence.”
The Jerusalem Sam Spiegel Worldwide Movie Lab is supported by Beracha Basis; the Rothschild Basis; The Israeli Movie Fund; the Israel International Ministry; the French Institute; the Hungarian Embassy in Israel; Carol Polakoff and the Sam Spiegel Basis
