The Screengrab : screengrab q&a

Screengrab Q&A: Mark Webber, director of Explicit Ills

Peter Smith — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 20:30:00 GMT

At twenty-eight, actor Mark Webber is already a recognizable veteran of the indie film-festival circuit. Using several years of valuable experience Webber took on a different role as the writer, director and producer of his first feature Explicit Ills. The semi-autobiographical film follows four interconnected stories within inner-city Philadelphia and focuses on some very relevant and timely social issues. It's been a big year for Webber. Aside from the release of his debut feature, he has been cast alongside Michael Cera in Edgar Wright's upcoming Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and also saw the birth of his first child. He spoke with us about the trials and tribulations of getting a movie from notebook to big screen as well as his muted optimism about America's current political landscape. — Bryan Whitefield

Obviously you've worked on a number of films as an actor and even a few as a producer, but how difficult was it to get your own film done from start to finish?
You know what? It's really hard [laughs]. I mean the turnaround from when I wrote the script to when we got it cast, then got financing, to up and shooting, actually happened in a matter of months. And even with editing and post it all came together within a year — which is really fast. But at the same time it's taken me almost twelve years to make this happen, in a way, because it's taken me working as an actor and meeting directors and learning from them as well as throughout that process establishing relationships with other talented, creative people. And because of that I was able to call Paul [Dano] and Rosario [Dawson] and [Jim] Jarmusch directly and get them to read my script, which for a lot of people starting out is the uphill battle that takes up a lot of your time and energy. So I was very fortunate in that way. Then the actual making of the film was just a series of constant highs and lows. We were working with a really small budget and not a lot of time and some really ambitious set-ups shooting-wise. Not to mention we were shooting on film and working with young kids in some not-so-great neighborhoods. But fortunately for me, the majority of the films that I've worked on have been shot in a similar way, so I was able to lean on some of that experience as a filmmaker myself.

Which directors do you feel like you learned the most about directing from? You already mentioned Jim Jarmusch, who was the executive producer on your film.
Jim is a big influence. His career as a filmmaker to me is awesome because he's just made the films he wanted to make the way he's wanted to make them. Ideally, that's how I feel all films should be crafted. Unfortunately, I've seen friends of mine essentially have films taken away from them and re-edited for the sake of making something that was more "commercial" — which is a really odd term to me, but one that permeates a lot of the talk outside of filmmaking. So Jim is really inspiring to me, and the fact that he was willing to be the Godfather to my first film was extremely helpful and beneficial.

I've done two films with Ethan Hawke now, and he's just a great person and an incredible actor, and has this really infectious spirit on set as a director that keeps everyone happy and willing to explore.

I also got to work with Todd Solondz on Storytelling and I was just blown away by the guy. In a way it was similar to when I worked with Thomas Vinterberg and Lars von Trier, where you're working with someone who you know is incredibly talented and you think they might have some trick up their sleeve, as if you're part of some experiment, but you want to be there. That's really cool to me.

One thing that really impressed me was the film's strong visual language. I know that you worked with Patrice Lucent Cochet, the cinematographer from the film you did with Steve Berra, The Good Life.
Thanks, and it was really cool that Patrice got that recognition at SXSW (Best Cinematography) for his work on the film. But having worked with him before, even just as an actor, went a really long way. I think it would have been difficult to have to develop a relationship with someone that important to the outcome of the film because there were so many other aspects that I was trying to manage.

On a side note, how disappointing is it when you make a quality film like The Good Life that for whatever reason never ends up getting into theaters? And on the flip side how satisfying is it when you do get to see a project through and get it out there?
It hurts. With The Good Life in particular, I was really proud of that film and the people who were fortunate enough to see it at Sundance that year seemed to really love the film. It got a DVD release, but it was made for theaters. So yeah, that one stung. But then to write and direct and produce a film and have it play at the Angelika? That's really a dream come true. It's just a crazy climate for independent film right now and you're really fortunate if your film gets seen at all, which is why film festivals are so crucial for a lot of these smaller movies. But I'm ecstatic that we're opening at the Angelika because I've seen a lot of incredible films there throughout the years, so it's a proud moment for me.

When did you decide to get an actor to essentially play the "Mark Webber" part?
[Laughs] Yeah, I had thought at one point that I would be in it, but I really wanted to feel what it was like to be a director on this film Then I saw Thumbsucker, and I had been hearing about Lou Pucci for awhile, partly because he was the young guy vying for some of the roles I might have been up for. And then I got a chance to meet him and talk about the project and we really got along. Part of it too was that Explicit was already so personal that I felt like I needed a little distance so I could retain perspective on it.

The film addresses some serious social issues. Do you feel more optimistic now with President Obama in office?
I feel like the very PC answer to that question is yes, but unfortunately I don't entirely feel that way. I think Obama is the first person in office in a really long time that actually feels like a real person and he has a good heart and he means well, but I'm still a believer in people coming together to change this world. I just don't think that it's possible for one man in a very corrupt system to be able to create real change. At the same time, I think President Obama is an eloquent speaker for change and an important catalyst for it even just in inspiring people and making them feel like they've elected someone who represents them. I just don't want people to lose the perspective and the faith in their own ability to create change and remain committed to actively trying to make this world a better place and not think it stops with electing someone. I am very happy that he got elected, but I'm also a little worried that it might take the wind out of people's sails. I don't want the empowerment that people felt in coming together and electing him to go away because he won. I want them to use that energy to help make their own lives better.

I know you already have some films lined up to act in, but will you write or direct again?
Definitely. That idea was cooking while I was shooting Explicit and then it just reached a fever pitch during post-production, because I always feel as soon you're done with something, all of a sudden you really know how to do it. Part of it is just accepting that idea and as an artist trying to learn from it for the next time. Making Explicit Ills was phenomenal for me because I love storytelling and filmmaking and the collective effort of making a movie, and now I feel like I could do it better. I've got some ideas that are just chicken scratch in a notebook right now, but I'm excited about starting this whole crazy process all over again.

Screengrab Q&A: Uschi Obermaier

Peter Smith — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 23:00:00 GMT

If anyone epitomizes a "wild thing," it's bohemian femme fatale Uschi Obermaier, sexual icon and successful model in 1960s Germany. She was the it girl, hippie rebel and rock-star player of the time (boasting affairs with Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Jimi Hendrix). With her signature pout, big hair and fearless attitude, Obermaier's free and passionate spirit made her one of the most desired women of the times.

She first earned her rebellious reputation as girlfriend of Rainer Langhans, leader of Germany's leftist party Kommune 1, but found their ideals conflicted with the freedom she desired. Her lust for ultimate liberty was fulfilled when she won the heart of adventurer Dieter Bockhorn, with whom she traveled around the world in a bus he custom-made for her.

Obermaier's story of freedom amidst the sexual revolution is documented in director Achim Bornhak's recently released Eight Miles High, which adapts her biography High Times. Actress Natalia Avelon takes us through Obermaier's short-lived life of glamour from teenage runaway to nomadic model and fought-over Stones groupie. The movie is a whirlwind tour of her life, capturing the restlessness of the time and costs of free love. Talking to Obermaier on the phone, I found that at sixty years old, she's an even more potent figure of femininity and sexuality than the film portrays. — Bianca Merbaum

So life in the '60s really was one wild party, with lots of sex, drugs and rock and roll?
It really was like that with all the ups and downs. At that time everything — the music, the fashion, the politics — everything was really new. Germany at the time was really suffocating and you were supposed to do what your parents wanted to. I just did not want it. Other people around me didn't want to put up with it either. So we tried everything, and sometimes it was good and sometimes we made mistakes. When we were so young we wanted to try out everything. And also our hormones were raging. Right away you fall in love and you think sex is a beautiful language and you want to speak it, you want to try it.

In the movie, 'free love' is a struggle, with a lot of jealousy and pain. Do you think free love can really exist?
That idea of 'free love' was kind of put on by the Kommune 1. That you don't own the other person. I never felt it. The saying 'jealousy doesn't exist' is just in the mind. I never understood it. If I love someone, I'm jealous like hell. When someone slept with someone else it hurt me. I'm just like a normal person too.

The movie doesn't show your life after Dieter Bockhorn's death. This whole period of your life ended when his life ended.
Up to the time when Bockhorn died, life was very glamorous and I had everything thrown into my lap. After Bockhorn's death I really hit the bottom. I was too old for modeling, I was in America, I didn't want to go back to Germany like my parents hoped after Bockhorn died. They hoped that I would come back home like a dog with his tail between his legs. But I said no, I'm not going to do that. It was very hard times for me. I didn't know how to exist, but I always followed my heart and nowadays, being sixty, I'm exactly where I always wanted and wished for.

Where's that?
My place in Los Angeles is in the mountains. I have a lot of space and freedom, I have a beautiful house and I just do what I want. I'm into making jewelry, and that seems to take off. I'm really, very happy with my life.

Let's gossip a little bit about your affairs with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Were they good lovers?
Were they good lovers? Of course. Otherwise I wouldn't have been with them. But people always ask me, "Who was the best lover?" and I have to tell you, the best lover is always the man I'm with, right now.

And who's that?
[Laughs] I'm not telling that!

There is a brief part in the movie about your exchange with Jimi Hendrix, but did you have anything intimate with him?
Unfortunately that's not in the movie. We were only together for a short time but in my mind he was just the sweetest person. He was just — I can't really explain it in words — but there was something really really special about him, not just because he was "Jimi Hendrix." He had something that really hit my nerve. He was a wonderful person, wonderful. Very shy!

Did he play you songs?
Um... no, not really, because we were busy [laughs].

Do you think Natalia Avelon's sexy performance is an accurate depiction of you?
Yeah. Well, I would say I was even better [laughs]. I think she did a good job. What really disturbed me — just little things — is she had too much makeup on. Like the red lipstick. You would have never caught me in red — you would have caught me in purple. Then she tried to make my pout, which didn't come naturally, so I kind of cringed. But really, I don't want to put anything down because she really did a great job. She picked up on a lot of my habits and attitude. The whole cast was really good, especially the guy who plays Bockhorn. At times, sometimes, my heart stopped — I thought it was old footage. But Bockhorn had this incredible smile, and he couldn't bring that.

Screengrab Q&A: Joachim Trier, Director of Reprise

Peter Smith — Fri, 16 May 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Joachim Trier's debut film Reprise centers on a pair of twentysomething best friends who drop their debut novels into the same mailbox to varied results. It's taken the writer/director on a very interesting journey. The film won Trier a Discovery Award at the 2006 Toronto Film Festival; it debuted in the States at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, and was later the featured film in the 2007 New Directors/New Films series, where Manohla Dargis of the New York Times declared it "one of the most passionately and intellectually uninhibited works from a young director I've seen in ages." It also went on to win Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Film at the Amanda Awards in Norway (the equivalent of an Oscar) in 2007. But only after support from superproducer Scott Rudin and Miramax will the film get a general release in American theaters today. Reprise is vibrant, inventive and original in both its ideas and its form, and is sure to be at the top of my own year-end list. — Bryan Whitefield

Foreign-language films typically have a hard time in America, and I remember someone at the MoMA screening asking if you had considered writing an English language version of Reprise. . .
[laughs] I've had offers, actually. But to me Reprise is perfect as it is now in its cultural setting. I'm interested in detail, and not because I'm trying to hone in on one particular part of the audience. You try to see things as they are — these are people who are living like that and have shoes like that and listen to music like this and this is the world where they live. You work to create it and you don't ask questions. To recreate that somewhere else would be absurd. But at the same time, some people were telling me, "This film reminds me so much of people I know on the Lower East Side." I get this even in Turkey. There were people there that were coming up to me to say, "We have boys like that in Istanbul that listen to Joy Division and everything."

You use some interesting formal devices in the film, like skewing timelines or having scenes play where the dialogue track doesn't match the action. How much of that was in the script and how much was done afterwards?
The screenplay is a lot like the film as a finished piece, but along the way you have to create something else and then come back to it. We would write a very intertwined, intercut scene to give the financiers an idea of how it would look. But then I would re-write it, with my co-writer, as a long linear scene that we would then cut up and go back to the initial idea. Dirty formalism, I usually call it. It needs to be alive and chaotic, yet it's also quite particularly planned.

The film plays very loose, but at the same time feels very focused.
I think those are the kind of contrasts we are always looking for when we do movies. I think it's the same for the actors. They go on set and they learn their lines and practice and run them again and again, and then they go on set and kind of lose them.

You're also dealing with the contrast between light and dark; the film balances very serious scenes with very funny ones.
It's kind of like music. In order to [fit in both tones], you need almost musical transitions.

That is how people actually deal with unhappy experiences. If you're going to pick your best friend up out of the mental hospital, you make a joke to deal with it.
Otherwise you won't survive. Compensational dynamics in people are more interesting. When the two boys are closest to each other, they can throw a lot of shit and say bad things to each other, but when they drift apart, they don't have that glue anymore. They end up trying to be polite; they're just not sure what to say anymore.

You cast mostly non-professional actors.
We looked at musicians or friends of friends or stand-up comedians, all sorts of people. In fairness, some of them are trained actors, but the lead parts are all people who have done other things. Like the guy that plays Phillip is a doctor. He worked with young teenage schizophrenics as part of his education as a doctor, so he had great experience, and he knew that madness isn't always excessive and screamy. It can sometimes be very drawn in.

Were there filmmakers or artists in general who inspired you?
Alain Resnais and Chris Marker are people who have meant a lot to me, because they made films that deal with almost the ground substance of cinema — memory, representation, identity — things that I think give themselves as themes to films particularly. Also Woody Allen, with Annie Hall. A lot of that stuff is seen as comedy but it's actually really good drama. But there are millions of references — a lot of music actually. The guy that did the score has a band called The White Birch, and we were listening to that all the time when we were writing. It was great when he said he would do the score for us since he'd never done feature film scores before.

Was he a friend of yours?
Not at the time, but we had some common friends.You know, it's a little ironic since Reprise is kind of about people who fall apart as friends, but I've made a lot of new friends through this process.

[SEMI-SPOILER ALERT] I thought it was refreshing to have an, in a sense, uplifting, almost happy ending.
Not everybody has interpreted it like that.

I kept waiting for something really dark to happen and I thought the way you tied things up was very nice. Did you struggle with that decision?
People interpret the ending differently. Some people see it as quite bleak and others see it as optimistic. I was always, in my mind, cheering for the characters; I just hope that people are open to an open ending.

One of the hallmarks of American indies seems to be that if you have a happy ending, you secretly wanted to make a commercial film.
I remember hearing acquisitions people talking about the films at Sundance: "Was it hopeful? Was it uplifting?" Those were the two words I kept hearing, and it struck me as so odd. . . I mean, what the fuck is hopeful? It makes me hopeful sometimes if a filmmaker can make a film that's truly sad and makes me feel less alone. But this idea of hopefulness I found very funny.

Screengrab Q&A: Lucia Puenzo

Peter Smith — Fri, 02 May 2008 22:15:00 GMT

I was probably about six years old when my mother told me about the baby boy she almost had. The baby that would have been born with an extra chromosome; an XXY. The doctors advised she terminate the pregnancy or risk having a very sick child. This was the 1970s, and little research had been done on chromosomal abnormalities. Today's evidence shows that if my mother had not been pressured to abort that baby boy, he very well may have grown up healthy and strong, with minimal behavioral issues. Nothing like the terrors the doctors had warned her about.

As a sophomore in college, I began feverishly studying the topic of intersexuality. I pored over Foucault's The History of Sexuality and obsessed about Anne Fausto-Sterling's theory of a five-sex gender model. Perhaps, I thought, it was part of my life's purpose to educate people about intersexuality, in homage to the baby who died so that I could exist.

Imagine my intrigue when I discovered the award-winning film XXY. Directed by Lucia Puenzo, this edgy, enthralling film explores the dramatic soul-searching of one intersex fifteen year-old, painfully straddling two worlds. It's a passionate depiction of the tumultuous road from desire to discovery. Puenzo called to discuss the film from her home in Argentina. — Alexandra Godfrey

What inspired you to make this film?
It was a writer who's right here with me — my husband, who wrote a short story about an intersex named Alex, and as soon as I read that short story I knew I wanted to do that film.

Did you have any personal connection to the story?
Actually, not at the moment when I read the short story. Of course I knew quite a lot about it because it was always for me an interesting subject, and I had read the few books — like Middlesex. It was curious for me how few artistic expressions of intersex I could find in modern times, because in ancient times there were so many, it was incredible.

They had a lot of very beautiful artwork depicting people with ambiguous genitalia and it was really more of an open thing.
Exactly, and they were always very powerful people, very respected. And something happened, after centuries and coming into modern times, where they began to be seen as people who had some kind of illness that had to be normalized. So that for me was a bit of a question mark, you know, why had that happened?

It's surprising that it's a taboo topic in today's progressive society. Was part of your reason for making this film to show people who might still be ignorant what it means to have a chromosomal abnormality?
Well, to be honest, at first, it was more of a selfish reason; I write literature, and I make cinema for me. If I cannot take it out of my head. Because you spend so much time with that material, that if it's only for altruistic reasons, to do something for others to see, I think you cannot — that desire is very difficult to work with for such a long time. So from the moment I read the story, I was so captivated by the love relationship of these two, of Alvaro and Alex, that I just knew I had to make something with it. Then, yes, when I began to do some research I realized I not only had something that I really loved as a subject but that the moment in the world was special.

As time has gone on I'm sure you've reached a lot of people who were ignorant about the subject.
Absolutely, many. I had never imagined that for how many people the subject was almost a mythology. Many people they thought that it couldn't be possible. That was a big surprise for me. You can see also how a country or a specific city is like that. In a very conservative city in Spain, everybody in the audience thought it was completely fiction. They couldn't imagine that it was possible. And in places like Thailand or Germany and the States, there was so much more knowledge that this was not fiction and that it really happens.

Were you able to share the movie with people who are intersex in some way?
Yes. The film was supported so much by so many of these people. I think that the film actually did well in many countries because many intersex people went out to defend and speak about the film. I really didn't look in the film for medical realism, in the sense that even though I researched for many months and the script was supervised by geneticists and by psychologists and many doctors, it was important for me that this was a fiction. Alex is not purely XXY; I used more than one diagnosis, not because I didn't know what I was doing but because of this idea that intersexuality can be poetic. And people absolutely understood and defended that. In Italy and Argentina some doctors explained why I was using one diagnosis in the title when the diagnosis in the film was different, and I think they supported the film because they understood that intersexuality can be a place of permanence and not a place of passage.

In your own words, what does XXY mean?
XXY clinically is a syndrome of young boys who start to feminize; it's actually the opposite of Alex. At the same time for me, XXY, outside the medical world, is this idea of the XX or XY together in one same body. It was also this idea of the three letters in the graphics for the film — it's almost like three Xs and the third one has one leg cut off. It was the idea that in a world where so many people look the same, some people have been normalized. Also, for me it was very important to me to find a title that was universal. Everywhere, even in Japan, the film was called XXY.

There's a lot of symbolism like that in the film. Alex's father, a marine biologist, is named Kraken.
Yes, I really liked this idea of this biologist who had studied the sexuality of other species in the world, who always saw Alex as the perfect creature. He never understood why Alex should be operated on or normalized. I thought it was important to have the other worlds where hermaphrodite organisms exist, like the animal world, present in some point. Sea turtles, from the outside, you cannot see if they are female or male. You have to open them.

Despite being very feminine looking, Ines Efron does a fabulous job of playing the ambiguous role and convincing the viewer of her dual existence. What kind of training did she go through?
She worked very hard. She went with me to many interviews with doctors and geneticists and she became a patient to one of them to understand exactly what was going on with her body. Then we spent many weeks with her and Alvaro going out to the street and looking for people whom we thought would move like Alex would move, and it was very hard for her not to look at men like she was a woman. She is so feminine and so fragile, she had to be very careful to go forth from a more androgynous place.

The sex scene between Alex and Alvaro is obviously quite a pivotal point in the film. It manages to be tender, awkward and at the same time almost animalistic.
That was actually the last day of the shooting. By that time we were very close, all of us. We had never rehearsed the scene because that was actually something that I never wanted to do; I wanted to reach that point and to find that scene for the first time. The only thing I asked for was to have a lot of time. We took the whole day and we had a lot of fun actually. The whole team could hear us laughing from the outside. It came out from games and playing. And Alex and Alvaro are very close friends, so that was very good.

Alex's animalistic qualities at this point suggest that sexuality is a human's most innate, primal characteristic.
Many people suggest the film is about freedom of choice and more rational things; I think it is a film basically about desire, no? The sexuality in the film is the most important, and that's what we worked on very much — and I thought that that was actually the only thing that moved the film all the time. I think that when people connect with their sexuality and what makes them feel desire, they are saved.

Screengrab Q&A: Eran Kolirin, Director of The Band's Visit

Peter Smith — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 22:30:00 GMT

Eran Kolirin's first feature, The Band's Visit, opened in New York and Los Angeles last Friday. A poignant story of an Egyptian police band lost in Israel, the film has won a host of awards worldwide. That the film has done well internationally is fitting, since for all its apparent evocation of local politics, its themes are existential — can we connect with other people, or even with our own pasts? The Band's Visit makes the political personal, capturing perfectly the homesickness that can strike even when you're still at home. And if I'm making it sound grim, it's also got some great jokes. When I reached Kolirin on the phone last week, he sounded weary and lonely, stranded in the middle of a two-week press tour — probably the perfect position from which to promote this wry, bittersweet film.

What was your initial inspiration for this film?
It began with an image of the main character, of Tewfiq, a man in uniform who sings an Arabic song. [Then] part of what you do is to research within yourself why this story interests you. It has my own private nostalgia for Egyptian cinema — part of my lost youth or childhood. I share this incomplete feeling that all of the characters share, a feeling of living beside life and not really touching. A movie is a kind of mirror of your own self.

The central relationship between Tewfiq, the reserved bandleader, and Dina, the woman who takes him in, feels very real. How did you develop it?
No big secret to this. Some of it was developed while working with the actors. Sometimes in a good cast you get this kind of magic, and at least as far as I'm concerned, between Sasson Gabai and Ronit Elkabetz, this is what happened. During the rehearsals we rewrote the scenes. For example, the whole scene of them on the park bench was written through rehearsal.

That relationship encapsulates the whole subtext of the film—the question of whether it's possible to connect with another person. Even though it's about people from different cultures and different languages, there's a universal quality to that struggle.
I never thought I had these characters who are very different and this movie kind of brings them together — not at all, not for a second. It's the very starting point, I never doubted it: they're all the same. And this is why sometimes when people describe the movie as different cultures coming together. . . I never thought about it this way.

As you show in some of the family scenes, it's perfectly possible to feel lonely and isolated even within your own family — never mind different cultures.
Yeah. I kind of have this thing with loneliness. [laughs]

What are some of your favorite films?
Mike Leigh's High Hopes. Down by Law by Jarmusch. I like very much Jean-Claude Brisseau, Sound and Fury. With this movie, I was thinking also of Jacques Tati and Aki Kaurismaki, and I guess there are a lot of others — I like Wenders a lot, I like Bresson and I like Ozu.

There's a very sharp sense of place in this movie. This outpost town, Bet Hatikva, feels very real. I have very strong childhood memories from those places. Since I have asthma, they sometimes would take me to small towns — not where we shot, but towns not far away from there — what they would call in Israel development towns. And I have memories of these concrete buildings — this kind of monumental communist architecture in the desert, and this feeling of distance and emptiness.

I tried to shoot it more like I remembered it than the way it is. It took me a lot of time to understand how to get this feeling. I realized that what makes a difference is the sound of those places. Sometimes in the desert the wind blows in your ears and you go deaf for a second. We tried to somehow capture this feeling in the whole sound of the movie.

If you just told somebody you were making a film about Arabs lost in Israel, they might expect an obvious political statement, which this film isn't.
I know those expectations. In some ways it's kind of a colonialist approach. You're expected to be in this theater play they wrote. And you know, I live in the Middle East, and I'm aware of the politics. This is a political movie as far as I'm concerned. There are questions of culture, there are questions of the connection of Israel to the region, and how it's lost its connection through the process of capitalization and modernization. There's a very specific connection between the Israeli side and the Egyptian side in the movie. They share this same feeling of loss, nostalgia. If you listen close enough and you're acquainted with the cultural conflicts of the region, you would see the movie raises a lot of political questions. Not just the obvious ones about the conflict — I'm not saying those questions are not important, but it doesn't have the character saying, you know, "My brother was killed in the war," and then everyone can sleep comfortably in their beds having been reassured about what it was all about.

How has the film been received in Israel and Egypt?
Unfortunately, it cannot be shown in Egypt, formally anyway, but I've been reading quite a lot of articles from the Arab world about the movie, and I've gotten some good reactions. It's been reviewed quite well in Israel, and again, the nuances, they differ from place to place, but at the end of the day, the proportion of people loving it and not loving it is about the same all over.

Israel couldn't submit this film for an Oscar, because over half of it is in English. Were you disappointed?
I would like to say thank God, because without the Academy Award I've been flying all over the States for two weeks now and I miss home. If I had been a nominee, they would take me here for two months. I would kill myself.