01/09/2016 - The debut feature by Israeli filmmaking duo Erez Mizrahi and Sahar Shavit is screening in the First Films Competition at the World Film Festival

Beneath the Silence by Erez Mizrahi and Sahar Shavit

The Montreal World Film Festival, a real melting pot of cultures through film, is celebrating its 40^th edition (read the news) – and one of those cultures represented is Israel. The gathering, which started on 25 August and will wrap up on 5 September, has welcomed an Israeli title in its First Films Competition: Beneath the Silence (Halumim), the debut feature by filmmaking duo Erez Mizrahi and Sahar Shavit.

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The film takes the viewer back to 1973. Six years after returning from the Six-Day War with shell shock, Menashe realises he will never be the man he used to be before the war. He can’t communicate with his surroundings, and spends his days driving around in his red truck for hours. The young family he created collapses due to his lack of communication with his wife, Daphna, and their little son, Shlomi. At a time when PTSD is still not recognised as a medical condition, Daphna struggles to get help from the military in order to hang on to her husband’s last remaining vestiges of sanity, while ten-year-old Shlomi tries to understand what happened to his father and why he is different. When the Yom Kippur War breaks out and Menashe is sent to the battlefield again, the small family crumbles to dust.

The film, written and produced by Mizrahi and Shavit, stars Amos Tamam, Adva Bole and Roy Fink, among others. Tomer Moneta served as the director of photography and Omri Klein as the composer of the music. The film has already been shown in Israel, at festivals such as the 15th Cinema South International Festival in the city of Sderot, close to the Gaza Strip, back in June.