International Competition : The Feature films

Ben Zaken

Efrat Corem

2015
Israel
1h30
Fiction
Col.

GRAND PRIX JANINE BAZIN BEST FEATURE FILM

Three generations of the Ben Zaken family live together in a small apartment in the outskirts of the seaside city of Ashkelon. Dina generously busies herself with helping her sons Leon and Schlomi. While the first works as the director of a construction business, the second barely manages to survive between a precarious employment situation and taking care of his 11 year old daughter Ruhi, a hypersensitive girl and a tormented soul. Ben Zaken falls within the kind of Israeli filmmaking that looks at a dysfunctional society with a centripetal and critical eye — this family constituting a sharp and painful allegory of such a society. Efrat Corem depicts frontally the characters struggling with a deep-seated angst, while he lets the film’s absent figures resonate —Ruhi’s mother and Dina’s husband, the father of the two sons.
(Arnaud Hée)

Efrat Corem studied cinema at Sapir College. Her graduate film, Your younger daughter Rachel was selected at the Cinéfondation competition in 2007.Since 2009, she is the artistic director of the Cinema South Film Festival in Sderot, in charge of the Israeli cinema section. Ben Zaken is her debut film.

Cast
Eliraz Sade, Rom Shoshan, Mekikes (Ronen) Amar, Chani Elemlch
Screenplay
Efrat Corem
Photography
Shafir Sarussi
Sound
Michael Goorevitch
Art direction
Ben Shalom Davidi
Editing
Nisim Massas, Lev Goltser
Production
Laïla Films - Itai Tamir

CONTACT :

Patra Spanou

patra.spanou@yahoo.com

 

2015 Competition