Movies in Hebrew at Izzy Streamisrael

If you are thinking about improving a language, any language, watching movies in the original language with subtitles helps a lot. The language of movies is usually easy, using basic conversational vocabulary, the kind you need to maintain a basic conversation. Additionally, movies are an excellent way to get immersed into a culture. No wonder that the American culture is so well known everywhere as the movies made in Hollywood do have such a widespread audience.

For those who are looking to improve their Hebrew while getting to know different historical and cultural facts about Israel, Izzy Streamisrael offers a good selection.

I tested the service for a week and was overall happy with the results, only that as for now the selection of movie is relatively limited. You will not find very popular Israeli movies, of the kind of those aired at international film festivals but rather popular local series and films. There are a couple of documentaries, but unfortunately none of the old movies.

However, it seems that the list of movies is permanently changing and those who are aired are really unique, of the kind that you hardly hear about it. Which does not mean that they are not worth watching.

The registration process on the platform is very easy: you register an email address, set up an account and a password. It costs 5 USD per month - which is a ridiculous price after all - with a 7-day free access. If you have some time on your sleeves and you love movies, one week is enough to figure out if you want to continue your membership or not. 

The main language of the website is English and one can watch it everywhere in the world. Especially for those looking to a more in-depth connection with Israel, the real Israel with all its goods and bads, Izzy Streamisrael is an easy gateway.

Here are the films that I watched during my trial period.

Allenby St.

The 12 episodes of Allenby St. - in installments of 30 minutes each - are based on the bestseller book of Gadi Taub - unfortunately only published in Hebrew. Taub also created the series and also has an episodic role. The film is following the spirit and the flesh of the book which follows the complicated relationships in the underworld of Tel Aviv, where Orthodox drug dealers meet desillusioned religious girls turned prostitutes, bouncers, merciless mafia-connected security guards and sentimental night club owners. 

The film has an alert pace, a couple of great twists and some good human insights, plus some good actors - like Aviv Alush (maybe they will upload more of his movies on the platform, one day). I watched it over the last weekend and it was definitely worth it. Like the book, it is not for the faint of heart and it contains openly aggressive and violent and sexual content, but it shares a slice of real Israeli life.

Benched

A short movie (22 minutes) directed by Gill Weinstein, Benched features Baruch, a former successful basketball player in the 1970s who became religious, abandoned his career and retired from the city. Now, he is back to visit unannounced her former lover and eventually see for the first time their son that he abandonned. 

I loved the concision of the visual language, as well as the fine tensions created through different encounters featuring the before and after. Although it is not explicitly expressed into words, the gestures, movements of the eyes the oppositions between the old and new life are building up finely. 

Although it is hard to remain non-judgemental, there is a beauty in the dramatic failures and human mistakes.

Ben David

The half-hour short movie by Evyatar Rosenberg, Ben David was my least favorite movie. One Shabak - Israel´s internal intelligence - agent, a religious Jew, is switched unexpectedly from one department to another. His new assignment is to recruit and infiltrate the Hilltop Youth movement, radicalized youngsters living in the settlements, often opposed to the state institutions, particularly police and Army. 

Although the topic is interesting, the intrusive ways of the Shabak agent were annoying and clumsy. Personally, I didn´t connect at all with this movie. Maybe the 30-Minute length was not the right tempo. 

Israeli Movie Review: The Day after I´m Gone by Nimrod Eldar

 

A teenage girl trying to overcome her grief. A widowed husband mourning his early departed wife. The Day after I´m Gone by Nimrod Eldar (2019) is a drama of growing up and out of the young age growth pains, set in Israel. The setting is important because it moulds the uniqueness of the experience and the human interactions - besides the language - but the struggles and emotions caught on the film are universal.

The father, Yoram, is a veterinarian in Tel Aviv, a cynical, calculated, cold person, an overwhelmed parent unable to see what is not obviously seen. He is highly precise when operating big animals in need of medical help, but he is unable to figure out the deep depression his daughter was sinking. Until, one night, a special suicide intervention team knocked at his door based on online hints received that someone in danger of suicide may live in the house (what a great thing it is, although some may say it is an infringement of democratic rights of privacy, still...). They were right, his daughter was laying unconscious in bed after trying to take her life with an overdose, 

Spontaneously, he decides to take a trip together to visit her mother´s family, in an effort to figure out together what it is all about. The dialogues are sparse, exactly as it happends nowadays with teenagers, no matter where they live. The verbal exchanges in the movie in general are very limited, as the nonverbal communication is better framed and insightful. 

My favorite dialogue though is when the girl, recently saved from the ER after her failed suicide attempt, is asking his father what would it happen if she would have died. Precise, put together, the father explains step-by-step the bureaucractic procedures accompanying the death. The daughter looks horrified. Nothing else would have happen, it seems. Not that traumatic dramatic change someone who commits at this age suicide expects to happen. As simple as that. Zohar Meidan, who is playing the daughter, makes a very good role at that, a combination of genuine naivity and struggle to find a self that suits her, playing a game of masks alternating the little curious girl and the woman she is supposed to be but don´t know yet how. Meidan also has experience in playing in theatre. 

The trip was healing, although not in the smooth, seamless way one may expect. In life, things are never happening this way and this is much healthier. Wounds may never heal, love could be lost for ever, but we are still pushed to keep living. The compassion and empathy shared through the dialogues is one way to survive. The other is to entrust people around us. Exactly as the father did to his daughter in the end. Even it was just a little step, it leaves the door to the soul ajar.

Besides the simple yet empathical way such a worned-out - and personally not beloved one - topic as teenage drama is approached, the images, in their sheer simplicity are also inspiring. The beginning and the end of the story are methaphorical projections and an inspired way to enter and leave the movie.

The Day after I´m Gone by Nimrod Eldar was shown at around 30 festivals all over the world and was premiered at Berlin Film Festival in 2019. As for now, the movie is available to stream on mubi.com. 

Rating: 4 stars

´Happy Times´...

Warning: The movie I am about to write contains very aggressive and violent scenes. Pour les connoisseurs, a Parasite-like movie with an ending on repeat 15 minutes into the story. But this is where the comparisons with the multi-awarded Korean movie end.

Happy Times (Nitra´eh Besmachot, in Hebrew) by the LA-based Israeli film director Michael Meyer . available on Amazon Prime - starts like your average movie about Israelis abroad. A reunion of a mixture of real-estate, tech kind of guys with wives in charge with different committees at the children´s Chabad schools. They get together for the post-Shabbat meals. Usually it´s the Friday evening which really matters, and among the secular Israeli getting together for Havdalah isn´t really a thing, but this film wants to be very different from any movie with Israelis, me and you and many of us ever watched.

They look happy, that kind of happiness brought to you by an expensive villa with a pool, and some common memories from the Army and couple of businesses. The movie is split into scenes, each with a quote from some of the characters. This brings a lot of reason into what is going on: a massacre with each and every one of the participants to the feast gonna die. It starts with...actually does not matter how it starts and how it ends. Anger leads to hate which leads to more anger and even more violence. Until the end of the movie, everyone is a happy psychopat for whom everything can be used as a gun.

The kind Shtisel and one of the protagonists of another Israeli Netflix series When Heroes Fly - which is not bad at all either - Michael Aloni, plays a pretty good role, of just another psycho gathered around the table, a born rebel cousin who´s guilty for at least few of the victims (tip: all are dying in the end). 

This mini-Israel is a stereotypical - but not necessarily untrue - reunion of characters we can easily encounter not only in the rich suburbs of LA: the hippy, the PTSD tech guy, the fornicator macho family father, the mixture of religious background for the very secular life, the racism against the Mizrahim and the blacks, the Chabad. And, seriously, even if you are in the middle of a massacre, don´t let your guest leave without packing fast a plate with some leftovers, after all you are a good Yiddishe mame no matter what.

The violence is never ending, gratuious and the ingenuity of the killing machines getting more and more creative from a victim to another. In the end, it should stop because no one is left. What cannot be stopped though is the running water from the clogget toilet.

Israeli Movie Review: Suicide

 

Suicide, an Israeli film directed by Benny Fredman, is an average crime movie, with sadistic gangsters and company owners in big trouble and debt. The film was released in 2014 and is available on Netflix, part of the monthly subscription.

In debt over his head, Oded Tsur is forced to set up his own suicide in order to honor the accumulated debts to a mafia ring. The events are set in Jerusalem and involve a lot of bizarre characters, and a crime story with some hilarious and spectacular twists. The mafia guys look like ogre - but do not speak Hebrew with a Russian accent - and exhibit an elaborated pleasure to kidnap and kill, especially children. 

The viewer should not expect too much depth from this movie, but it is entertaining and worth spending a bit of adrenaline-fuelled time. There is plenty of black humour too, for those looking for more than just mafia stories from the Holy Land.

Rating: 3 stars

 

The Operative. A Better, Different Version of Tehran

When I started to look about how to watch Tehran, it came to my attention that there may be another movie on a relatively similar bigger topic - the spy war between Iran and Israel: The Operative, directed by the Israeli film director Yuval Adler, that also directed the interesting movie Betlehem that I watched a couple of years ago, featuring two actors that will later be distributed in Fauda. 

The 1h54m- movie, which was released in 2019 and presented at the Berlinale, and is available on Amazon Prime, is based on a novel by the Israeli author Yiftach Reicher-Atir, The English Teacher. Reicher-Atir was himself familiar with the intricacies of intelligence work and was part of the Operation Entebbe, the final format of the novel being edited dramatically by the intelligence agencies.

The movie adapted the book with relatively good results. I couldn´t say which version is the best, both in their own right being able to convene a complex story with interesting ethical and human questions. 

Rachel, the main character played by the German-American Diane Kruger, who also had a role in Inglourious Basterds and was among others Helen in Troy. Daughter of a non-Jewish mother that spent some time in the kibbutzim in the 1970s and a Jewish anti-Zionist British professor, she is recruited to work for Mossad in Iran, as English teacher. There, in-between her operations, she falls in love with one of her targets. Then, suddenly disappears while her former lover is stuck in Germany in an attempt of recruitment. 

I personally didn´t like the character, although was good played, but in fact it features a lot of complexities of working under pressure and being not always honestly acknowledged the risks of the work. Rachel was not prepared for the complex situations and practically abandoned to decide on herself when under high pressure to achieve her targets. On the other hand, she acted unprofessionally while falling in love with a local and even getting pregnant with him, a situation that her handler didn´t deal with it properly anyway - by not sharing the situation to his superiors. The price she was supposed to pay was elimination, but things are not always happening as in the intelligence scripts, because feelings may overcome the smart projections.

The Operative is a good movie. both in terms of the subject and the art of the actors. It has a completely different spin as Tehran and definitely a different audience but was equally worth to watch it.

Rating: 4 stars

Israeli Movie Review: Zero Motivation by Talya Lavie

Hopefully, in a year from now, I will remember how in the middle of the second wave of pandemic and facing a confused future of all kinds, I laughed hysterically on my own for two full hours. 

Years of waiting to watch this movie, a spontaneous decision to do it after some bad news and a lot of Corona stress: the Israeli movie Zero Motivation directed by Talya Lavie - that I watched on mubi.com - is a gem of black humor. Exactly what I needed to run out of my petty problems.

Based on the film director´s experience in the IDF, without being autobiographical, it features the crazy adventures of girls soldiers in jobnikiot (noncombat) missions, in a basis in the middle of the desert. In Israel, girls are also under the obligation of conscription with 18, but not necessarily sent to combat. In Zero Motivation, there is no combat, no conflict and no checking-points, just a day and night office work and a lot of juicy characters. A kind of Israeli M.A.S.H. with the kind of direct, hilarious and absurd humor that you can only find there. 

I couldn´t stop laughing more than once, and the laugh come naturally in situations when the everyday military protocols are faced with the equal amount of absurdity by those girls who just happen to have to be there. My favorite is the fight with office stapler machines, a very dangerous weapon when in skillful hands. Elegantly, the movie has also something to say about how frustrating may be for women to be in decision-making positions in a world where men take it all. If women can be prime ministers, why not Army generals?

Zero Motivation was first presented in 2014 at Tribeca Film Festival and to other film festivals around the world. It´s really a gem of contemporary Israeli life.

Rating: 5 stars

Tehran. The Movie

I should keep restraining myself from having too many expectations from cultural productions everyone is talking about over and over again. Books, movies, theatre, music...that are such a hype, especially on social media that I generously serve those days, may not be such a great work of art, but just benefit of both a touch of actuality and a great - i.e. generous - advertising budget.

Take, for instance, Tehran, the 8-episode movie released this September, a production of Apple TV and the Israeli channel KAN. Some love it, some hate it. I´ve read furious tweets against and academic investigations into various messages and turns of the story. Indeed, movies are a great indicator of political positionings and ideological interpretations of current events, an excellent example in this respect being the Bond-series.

And when it comes to the Israeli-Iranian relations you know that nothing is neutral and innocent about it. That´s how it is for now but there is no black and white but a lot of colours in between and people belonging to a shade or another.

The story: Tamar Rabinyan, an Israeli born in Iran, is in a mission in Iran, during her military service (really, at such a green age, only because of her IT skills...) as a hacker (loud laughs...seriously, since when hackers have to travel to their target destination?) on behalf of the Mossad. She is involved in some local incidents and is getting lost - while wearing a hilarious sanitary-pad like nose covering - but find help and emotional/sexual support in the arms of another hacker that she first ´met´ across the Dark Web. There are wild parties with drugs and drinking - like in Tel Aviv - and encounters with the Revolutionary Guards and various Mossad backers on the ground. Although on a mission she contacts a lost aunt married with a Muslim policeman and a daughter actively involved with the Revolutionary Guards. Tamar enters secure institutions in Iran, on whose halls she speaks Hebrew with her bosses in Israel. 

Overall: Some parts of the movie make sense, many not, there are some good actors playing excellent roles like Shaun Toub playing the Revolutionary Guard counterintelligence Faraz Kamali, there are some smart twists of the screenwriting by Moshe Zonder (the creator of Fauda) but Tamar does not make too much sense as a Mossad agent - while the other top Mossad Iranian-born woman Kadosh does, but she is killed. Some episodes are too long, and the love story between Milad and Tamar is clumsy. There are some ideological messages with a drop of truth - the mullahs stole the land, we want to take it back and they help us - and the longing for Iran of many Iranian Jews is so real. A good point is there are some smart nuances outlined between the different centers of power and the everyday Iranian is seen in a human, even sympathetic light. 

Personally, I don´t regret watching Tehran but it´s just an entertainment before and after the war is over.

Rating: 3 stars

Watching Fauda on Netflix

Fauda - which means chaos in Arabic -, labelled as the Israeli version of Homeland which is available in 2 series on Netflix is aggressive, unbearable cruel and might raise a lot of red flags on the part of the left-wing but it's genuinely realistic. 

Based on the experience the authors of the screenplay - Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff - had themselves during the Army service in the Mista'aravim unit - dealing with special counter-terrorism operations - it shows both sides - Israeli and Palestinians in a different light that supporters of both would love to see them. Israeli are psychologically manipulative while Palestinians don't miss a change to kill each other in a fight for power which overcomes sometimes their 'resistance'. Betrayal is such a human sin and desire to survive might be bigger than any potential reward in the world to come. 

You have dangerous terrorists addicted to chocolate, and poor Cpt. Ayoub who in the middle of a complicated interrogation shall give clear directions to his kids about what to eat for dinner - and terrible strong women who are hard to break, although destiny broke their lives more than once. The political and social context in the area - on the Palestinian side especially - is relativelly well portrayed, with the complex fight for power and authorities between different political and military factions as well as the impact of newly 'imported' radical movements, mostly from Syria, such as Daesh (ISIS).

Not all episodes are equally interesting and not all the actors are outstanding good, but watching them on binge - two series in a short week - might give an short idea of life and death in this part of the world. There is no romanticism and no black-and-white drama either, just raw confrontations and fight for survival - personal and/or political. No one could be brave in this fight.

This fight for survival, which involves also having to deal with some people that might think are your worse enemies is unfortunatelly unknown to many outsiders. The fact that besides the black-and-white, occupier vs. victim perspective, on the ground there are much more complex interactions and people from both sides of the wall can work - sometimes very well - together. There are Arabic speaking Jews and Hebrew speaking Arabs, there are people who are friends regardless their religion and language their speak. Jews from Arab lands and Iran, mostly the first generation, but sometimes the second too, do feel at home among their Arabic neighbours (ask any old Jew from Iran and Iraq about their memories about their home lands and you will be surprise how much love they kept in their hearts for their place of birth). They don't love each other that much and maybe they are not friends either, but they know each other much better than people whose only political activism is to post on social media ready made materials often produced by the propaganda departments of Hamas or other proxies (in Fauda the members of Hamas, compared to other radical military wings, look like a bunch of playboys). The propaganda reality that various political entities (none sides are innocent) want to project is that some are always good and some are always bad and until one side disappears, there will be no peace.

When someone wants to really start understanding beyond the propaganda narrative, it should start by gathering data and information and facts, talk to people and understand both sides with an open, realistic and emotion-free mind. The fact that some always started their school days cursing Israel and the Jews make them the least experts in understanding the area unless they really want to. Reacting with tears in your eyes when you see a video about 'Nakba' or graffiti on the wall portraying the resistance, donning a keffiyeh is nothing. Really nothing. Did you RT and liked religiously all those messages about Nakba/Nekba today? With the right hashtag? Complained to a random colleague about what the occupation is doing to people? You paid your moral duties to the world today. Repeat. (Al Jazeera Network which produced many of those easy-to-share videos is supported by the gas-rich Qatar which generously subsidizes Hamas, besides the Palestinian Authority).

Sometimes I wish very much I will get to live the moment when Israel will be friend again with Iran and the Arab countries will recognize the state. All those people who really believed what the political propaganda wanted them to believe will need to find a new cause to 'fight' from the comfort of their chair in the front of their computer RT-ing or sharing what they were supposed to share, isn't it? During the Cold War, such people used to be called - excuse my French - 'useful idiots'. By the way, top leaders of the terrorist movements almost never offer themselves to die in terror attacks. Just an observation.

Knowledge brings always power. With all its imperfections and Hollywood-touch, Fauda can help a little bit to see a different side of the coin. Politics are complicated and not for everyone's understanding, especially in the Middle East (something that the US, Russia, France and the Britain among others hardly grasp, if ever).