Screened as part of NZIFF 2011

Footnote 2011

Hearat shulayim

Directed by Joseph Cedar

A deadpan Israeli comedy about duelling father-son professors, Footnote was an unexpected hit at Cannes and a deserving winner of the Best Screenplay award. “An enjoyable, and quite literal, textbook thriller.” — indieWIRE

Israel In Hebrew with English subtitles
103 minutes

Director, Screenplay

Producers

David Mandil
,
Moshe Edery
,
Leon Edery

Photography

Yaron Scharf

Editor

Einat Glaser Zarhin

Production designer

Arad Sawat

Costume designer

Laura Sheim

Music

Amit Poznansky

With

Shlomo Bar Aba (Eliezer Shkolnik)
,
Lior Ashkenazi (Uriel Shkolnik)
,
Alisa Rosen (Yehudit Shkolnik)
,
Alma Zak (Dikla Shkolnik)
,
Daniel Markovich (Josh Shkolnik)
,
Micah Lewesohn (Yehuda Grossman)
,
Yuval Scharf (Noa, newspaper reporter)
,
Nevo Kimchi (Yair Fingerhut)

Festivals

Cannes (In Competition) 2011

Awards

Best Screenplay, Cannes Film Festival 2011

Elsewhere

“Father-son movies are usually man-boy dramas, but this excellent Israeli film, written and directed by Joseph Cedar, shows that the threads of competition, envy, exasperation and love are no less complex when the parent and the child are both grown men. Eliezer Shkolnik (Shlomo Bar Aba) is a professor of Talmudic studies at the HebrewUniversity, toiling tirelessly and nearly anonymously for 30 years to unlock the secrets of the Jerusalem Bible. His son Uriel (Lior Ashkenazi) teaches in the same department but with much more success; to Eliezer’s brilliance and dedication he adds the gift of smooth schmoozing. When one of them is awarded the vaunted Israelprize, the other must summon restraint and ethics, all the while stewing at the injustice. Rigorously balanced in its sympathies, and with a piercing view of human behavior under stress, the film is a human comedy that spans and understands the generations. This subtle delight is no mere footnote to the competition slate; it is one of this Festival’s glories.” — Mary Corliss, Time

“A comedy set in the Israeli academic world, and within that, in the tiny and rarefied realm of Talmudic scholarship, might sound like the ultimate film-festival niche product… But Cedar’s film is a story about intense professional rivalry and father-son conflict, and you don’t have to be Jewish or work in a university to understand that.” — Andrew O’Hehir, Salon.com