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Actor-director Oded Kotler’s film, based on a story by Yitzhak Ben-Ner (who also wrote the screenplay), is a critical allegory for the moral depravity of Israel’s 1948 founding generation – the same Labour comrades who built the State of Israel only to become, in the end, completely and utterly morally bankrupt.
The plot of the film is set in 1977 Israel, on the eve of the seismic political earthquake that saw Israel’s long-governing socialist Labour party ousted from office by Likud, after nearly 30 years in power. At the centre of the story is Effie (Topol), a high-powered barrister who has just turned 50. At the start of the film, Effie thinks he is having a heart attack, but his doctor then explains that the pain he’s been experiencing is the result of mental stress. The country is changing all around ‘comrade’ Effie – whose comfortably cushy life, with strong ties to the ruling party is slowly crumbling away, along with the party’s old moral backbone. Effie, who’s been handling the legal affairs of his MP friends, gradually realises how corrupt they’ve all become. Now neck deep in politics at its nastiest, Effie still believes he can somehow emerge from this unscathed and with hands clean.
Effie, now on his second marriage, also happens to have a voracious sexual appetite. A serial bed-hopper, he now finds himself calling upon his ex-wife Ariela (Galia Topol) increasingly often, as she reminds him of a happier, simpler time – and perhaps also a happier, simpler Israel which he so longs for. Effie and Ariela visit the kibbutz where they both trained as lawyers, but their rekindled romance ends up as no more than a fleeting episode. After all, they’ve both now started over with new families. Effie, like his party, fails to change his spots and the inevitable result is indeed a crushing fall from grace.
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All rights are reserved to the Jerusalem Cinematheque – Israeli Film Archive (RA) and the rights holders of the works. Any use of works on the website for non-individual and non-personal purposes is strictly prohibited without prior, written permission.
For more information about the rights holders, please visit the relevant collection page, or contact the Jerusalem Cinematheque – Israeli Film Archive (RA) offices.
We have the utmost respect for all rights holders’ copyright and put great efforts to track down any and all intellectual property owners for the purpose of seeking and obtaining permission to use their materials featured on the website.
Any and all materials are used in accordance with clause 27a of the 2007 Copyright Act. If you believe that your rights as intellectual property and copyright owners of any material featured on this website have been compromised, then you may contact the Israeli Film Archive via email with a cease-and-desist notice, requesting that the material in alleged copyright infringement no longer be used. When contacting the archive, please state the merit to your copyright ownership claim, as well as your full name, email address, and telephone number, with a link to the relevant webpage.
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