The first feature by Ukrainian-born, Israeli-based director Veronica Nicole Tetelbaum, Houses [+leggi anche:
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scheda film], is set to have its world premiere in the Berlinale’s Forum (see the news). Cineuropa exclusively brings you the trailer for the film.

Houses is the story of 28-year-old Sasha, a non-binary person who returns to the isolated Israeli city of Safed, where he immigrated with his family from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s. 

“A house has no function if it is not lived in, the body has no value if you do not identify with it, the heart has no comfort if it has no love,” Sasha writes in his notebook as he goes back on a transformational journey between the houses where he spent his childhood. Today, Sasha has nothing more than a car and a notebook, and he tries to understand why. And so, by intertwining the past with the present, male with female, and reality with fantasy, Sasha moves between all of the houses he used to live in as a child, gathers different fragments of his memories, confronts his traumas, and encounters the good and the bad, all in search of a path towards inner peace and self-acceptance.

Co-produced by Israel's Elad Gavish for Marker Films and Adi Navon for Bona Productions, and by Anatol Schuster for Germany’s Zwillingfilm, Houses stars Yael Eisenberg, Tali Sharon and Evgenia Dodina. It was shot by Yaniv Linton and edited by Avishai Sivan, while the score was composed by Rike Huy. Rotem Dror served as the sound designer.

The film was produced with the support of the Israel Film Fund, the Gesher Multicultural Film Fund, HessenFilm und Medien, Mifal HaPais and Women in the Picture Association. It was developed with the support of TorinoFilmLab, and was presented at the 2022 Venice Gap-Financing Market and at EWIP in 2023.

Check out our exclusive trailer below, as well as the recently unveiled poster for the film: