Eli Cohen is a director, screenwriter, and film actor. Cohen started out acting in theatre. Alongside his stage work, he was already adding a string of film roles to his credits including He Walked Though the Fields (1967) and Prisoners of Freedom (1968). In 1986, Cohen directed his debut feature film, Ricochets, commissioned and produced by the IDF Spokesperson’s Film Unit, and originally intended to serve as no more than an intra-military PR film. The film was a huge commercial success. In a time when local moviegoers were steering well clear of Israeli films, nearly one million people saw it in cinemas. Ricochets was also featured as part of the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard section whilst leading man, Alon Aboutboul took home the Best Actor award at the Jerusalem Film Festival. Cohen also penned the lyrics to the film’s theme. The song was a hit and over the years, became an iconic tune that captured and embodied the spirit of the First Lebanon War.
The screenplay for his 1988 film, The Summer of Aviya, Cohen co-wrote with Gila Almagor and Haim Bouzaglo. The film, based on Almagor’s own autobiographical book of the same title, is an exploration of her childhood experiences as a young girl grappling with her mentally frail, Holocaust survivor mother. The film was a massive success. It was shown in festivals worldwide, winning multiple awards including the Silver Berlin Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival, and Best Foreign Film at the San Remo Festival. The 1994 sequel, Under the Domim Tree (1994) was also well-received, showing at a number of international festivals including the Cannes Film Festival. The film won three Israeli Film Academy awards, the Best Film award at the Jerusalem Film Festival, and the Artistic Excellence Award at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in the US.
