21/09/2015 - Michal Vinik’s first feature film is shown in the Spanish festival’s sidebar

The 63^rd San Sebastián Film Festival has kicked off this Friday. The main sidebar, New Directors – dedicated to first or second feature films from all over the world –, is screening a film hailing from Israel: Blush, by Michal Vinik. 

Produced by Tel Aviv’s Lama Films, the film follows 17 year old Naama Barash (Sivan Noam Shimon), who enjoys alcohol, drugs and hanging out with like-minded friends. Her activities are an escape from a home where her parents always fight, and a rebellious, army-enrolled sister, who, one day, disappears. As a new girl shows up at school, Barash falls deep in love for the first time, and the intensity of the experience at once confuses her and gives her life new meaning.

Vinik studied scriptwriting and filmmaking in Tel Aviv, and her first short film, Bait, was presented at Sundance 2009, while the second, Srak, made it to Locarno 2011. Michal also teaches scriptwriting at Tel Aviv University and at the Beit Berl Academic College. 

Lastly, another Israeli film school, the Sapir College’s School of Audio and Visual Art, will be represented in the gathering. Student Nitzan Zifrut will show the short film Stationed, about a young girl stationed in Hebron, who understands the impossibility of existing as a woman in the military system when her soldier friends ask her to spend a weekend with them.