Tsili

Last updated
Tsili
Tsili.jpg
Film poster
Directed by Amos Gitai
Screenplay byAmos Gitai
Marie-Jose Sanselme
Based onTsili
by Aharon Appelfeld
Produced byMichael Tapuach
Starring Sarah Adler
Meshi Olinski
Lea Koenig
Adam Tsekhman
Andrey Kashkar
CinematographyGiora Bejach
Edited byIsabelle Ingold
Music byAmit Poznansky
Alexej Kotchekov
Production
companies
Agav Films
Trikita Entertainment
Distributed byEpicentre Films (France)
Release dates
  • 1 September 2014 (2014-09-01)(Venice)
  • 12 August 2015 (2015-08-12)(France)
Running time
88 minutes
CountriesIsrael
Russia
Italy
France
LanguagesYiddish
Ukrainian
Polish
German
Russian

Tsili is a 2014 Israeli drama film directed by Amos Gitai and based on the novel of the same name by Aharon Appelfeld. It was screened at the 71st Venice International Film Festival in an out of competition slot. [1]

Contents

The screenplay is based on the novel The Shirt and the Stripes by Aharon Appelfeld. The story follows a Holocaust survivor, a teenage girl in Europe, who struggles to survive alone in nature during World War II and her wandering after the war ends.

Lea Koenig narrates excerpts from Appelfeld's book in Yiddish.

The film was selected as the official entry at the Venice Film Festival and also participated in the Haifa International Film Festival.

Plot

In 1942, twelve-year-old Tsili is left behind by her family, who flee their village as the war arrives, entrusting her to guard their home. To survive, Tsili conceals her Jewish identity and leaves the village to search for food, finding work on farms where she endures exploitation and abuse for scraps of bread. After being beaten by some of her employers, she decides to escape to the mountains, hiding in the forests south of Czernowitz. In this war-torn landscape, Tsili builds a secluded refuge to evade the violence ravaging the valley below. Her hideout is eventually discovered by Marek, who speaks to her in Yiddish. Realizing they are both Jewish, they choose to stay together. One day, Marek heads to the village for supplies but never returns. As the war ends, Tsili leaves her refuge and encounters a group of survivors near the coast, all seeking a boat to take them to a new life.

Cast

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aharon Appelfeld</span> Israeli novelist and Holocaust survivor

Aharon Appelfeld was an Israeli novelist and Holocaust survivor.

<i>Free Zone</i> (film) 2005 Israeli film

Free Zone is a 2005 film directed by Amos Gitai. Shot in Israel and Jordan, the Israeli-Belgian-French-Spanish production stars Israeli Jewish actress Hanna Laslo, Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass, and Israeli-American actress Natalie Portman. It is the second film of Gitai's "Border" or "Frontier" trilogy.

Kadosh is a 1999 film by Israeli director Amos Gitai. It was entered into the 1999 Cannes Film Festival.

<i>Alila</i> (film) 2003 film by Amos Gitai

Alila is a 2003 Israeli film directed by Amos Gitai and starring Yaël Abecassis, Uri Klauzner, and Hanna Laslo. The drama follows half a dozen very different characters through their lives in modern-day Israel, giving Gitai an opportunity to comment on his country's top social issues.

The Holocaust has been a prominent subject of art and literature throughout the second half of the twentieth century. There is a wide range of ways–including dance, film, literature, music, and television–in which the Holocaust has been represented in the arts and popular culture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chava Alberstein</span> Israeli musician (born 1946)

Chava Alberstein is an Israeli musician, lyricist, composer, and musical arranger. She moved to Israel in 1950 and started her music career in 1964. Alberstein has released over sixty albums in Hebrew, English, and Yiddish. She is known for her liberal activism and advocacy for human rights and Arab-Israeli unity, which has sometimes stirred controversy, such as the ban of her song "Had Gadya" by Israel State Radio in 1989. Alberstein has received numerous accolades, including the Kinor David Prize, the Itzik Manger Prize, and honorary doctorates from several universities.

<i>Badenheim 1939</i> Israeli novel by Aharon Appelfeld

Badenheim 1939 is an Israeli novel by Aharon Appelfeld. First published in Hebrew in 1978 as באדנהיים עיר נופש, it was his first novel to be translated into English, and was subsequently translated into many other languages. Described as "the greatest novel of the Holocaust", this novel is an allegorical satire that tells the story of a fictional Jewish town in Austria shortly before its residents are relocated to Nazi concentration camps in German-occupied Poland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amos Gitai</span> Israeli film director and screenwriter

Amos Gitai is an artist and an Israeli filmmaker, born 11 October 1950 in Haifa, Israel.

<i>Disengagement</i> (film) 2007 French film

Disengagement (Désengagement) is a film directed by Amos Gitai, starring Juliette Binoche, with Jeanne Moreau in a supporting role. The film is a French/Italian/Israeli co-production, and was shot in France, Germany and Israel. It is the third film of Gitai's "Border" or "Frontier" trilogy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ronit Elkabetz</span> Israeli actress and filmmaker

Ronit Elkabetz was an Israeli actress, screenwriter and film director. She worked in both Israeli and French cinema. She won three Ophir Awards and received a total of seven nominations.

Yolande Zauberman is a French film director and screenwriter.

Milim, English title Metamorphosis of a Melody is a 1996 Israeli drama film by Amos Gitai. The film starring Ronit Elkabetz and Samuel Fuller is based on The Jewish War by Josephus. It is a cinematic realisation of stage-based productions by Gitai.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lea Koenig</span> Israeli actress

Lea Koenig is an Israeli actress, nicknamed The First Lady of Israeli Theatre.

<i>Promised Land</i> (2004 film) 2004 film by Amos Gitai

Promised Land is a 2004 French-Israeli film, directed by Amos Gitai and starring Rosamund Pike, Diana Bespechni, and Hanna Schygulla. It tells the story of a group of East European girls smuggled into Israel to serve as prostitutes. The film is the first of Gitai's "Frontier" trilogy and premiered at the Venice Film Festival.

<i>Blooms of Darkness</i> 2006 novel by Aharon Appelfeld

Blooms of Darkness is a 2006 novel by the Israeli writer Aharon Appelfeld. The narrative follows an 11-year-old Jewish boy who stays with a prostitute in a Ukrainian ghetto during World War II. Appelfeld said that with the book, he "wanted to explore the darkest places of human behavior and to show that even there, generosity and love can survive; that humanity and love can overcome cruelty and brutality". The novel, translated by Jeffrey M. Green won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2012.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rama Burshtein</span> American-born Israeli filmmaker

Rama Burshtein-Shai is an American-born Israeli filmmaker best known for her 2012 debut feature, Fill the Void.

Ilan Moskovitch, is an Israeli filmmaker, producer, director, casting director and acting instructor.

<i>Berlin-Jerusalem</i> 1989 film

Berlin-Jerusalem is an 89-minute 1989 British-Dutch-French-Israeli-Italian English-, French-, German-, and Hebrew-language independent underground dramatic historical experimental art film directed by Amos Gitai.

Nili Rachel Scharf Gold is an Israeli-American professor of modern Hebrew language and literature in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to the study of modern Hebrew literature, she draws in her research on approaches from psychoanalysis, urban history, diaspora and migration studies, and studies of collective and individual memory. She has published prize-winning books on the Israeli Hebrew poet, Yehuda Amichai, and on the cultural, social, and architectural aspects of the city of Haifa. She has promoted an awareness of modern Hebrew culture in the United States by sponsoring conferences about, and public readings and lectures by, a range of Israeli writers and filmmakers.

Adam Tsekhman is a Canadian actor best known for his role as Gary Green on the television series Legends of Tomorrow.

References

  1. "Four Clips from Amos Gitai's New Venice Fest Film 'Tsili'". Indiewire. 18 August 2014. Retrieved 23 August 2014.