And on the Third Day (2010)

This is a movie about people caught up in the moment just before a large or small change is about to take place in their lives. A combination of chance and fate delude the protagonists throughout. The movie attempts to describe the life of individuals in contemporary Israeli society, and the almost impossible attempt to simply live one's life. Whether he is a regular citizen or an important "boss", the life of every Israeli is consciously or unconsciously shaped by the national state of affairs. This "state of affairs" filters into his life and into his very being, at times in a destructive and irrevocable manner. Most often, the individual remains unaware of the influence that the big picture - the country suffering tremendous pressures from both inside and outside - has on his personal state of being. This influence resembles a cloud hovering over us while we scurry about on the ground below - like aimless ants who have lost their hill. The movie represents Israel as a country already far beyond identity crises. This is a country where violence is a way of life, and which is governed by the world view of the "stupid, the evil and the corrupt." This is a society reduced to gangs that coalesce and break up according to their needs. Anarchy is everywhere, and the perverse satisfaction of dark urges is taken for granted. The chaos this movie attempts to represent does not lie in the future. This is a world ruled by verbal, spiritual and physical violence, sexual harassment, rape, cunning, theft, arson, assault, eating disorders, cancer, post-trauma, hit-and-run accidents and other ailments. Within the chaos that envelops this perverse urban reality, mere chance appears to be the "organizing principle." On one level, the game of chance is the result of violence being a two-edged sword. On the other hand, it partakes of the typically Israeli reality of chance encounters. The forced intimacy created by these encounters becomes reality due to the power of comradeship and companionship - born of the shared experience of different exigencies and of a language, a place and a given time. Beneath the surface, however, there constantly arise moments of longing, humaneness and compassion. They exist in this world as a kind of potential of which only few realize that it does exist. The same few that mourn the loss of a sense of purpose when the final avalanche of tears erupts at the end of the movie...