In Image of Victory, it’s 2014, and Israel is at war in Gaza. Inside an Israeli hospital, hundreds gather to boost national morale, and Uri, a wounded Israeli soldier, finds himself unwillingly turned into a war hero. A private family hardship turned public spectacle offers an inside critical look into Israeli society and the way war as a state of mind is shaping it as a nation.
The Mute’s House is about a building in Hebron, which gets its name from the Israeli soldiers stationed there and the tour guides who pass by daily. The building’s only occupants are a deaf woman, Sahar, and her eight-year-old son, Yousef. The family’s unique story is told through Yousef’s eyes as he goes through his daily routine in a city torn apart by hatred and violence.
NIF Film Club discussed this film with NIF’s VP of Public Engagement Libby Lenkinski and directors Adi Mishnayot and Tamar Kay.
Adi Mishnayot is a writer, director, and producer based in Tel Aviv. She studied film at the Steve Tisch School of Film and Television at Tel Aviv University. Image of Victory, her debut short documentary, premiered in June 2019 at the Tel Aviv International Student Film Festival, winning both the Best Film award and the Audience award. At the Jerusalem Film Festival, it won Best Documentary Short and at the Israeli Documentary Film Awards it won Best Student Film. Israeli film critic Oron Shamir called it: “A masterpiece of text versus subtext… one of the most Israeli films I have ever seen. A concentrated capsule of all that is crazy and absurd in this ongoing experiment called the State of Israel that most of us take for granted.” Adi is currently working on a short fiction film.
Tamar Kay graduated from the Sam Spiegel Film & Television School in Jerusalem in 2015.
She is a two-time Israeli Academy Award nominee. Her Thesis film, The Mute’s House, was shortlisted for the 2017 Best Short Documentary Academy Award (Oscars) and screened internationally, winning numerous awards in prestigious festivals.
Unchained, an Israeli TV drama Tamar co-created with Yossi Madmoni & David Ofek, premiered in 2019, at the Israeli KAAN channel and was accepted to the prestigious Series Mania festival. Tamar edited the TV series, Arik Einstein: A Standard Love Song, which won the Israeli Emmy for Best Documentary in 2018.
Prior to her film studies, she completed a dual degree in Psychology & Philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Currently, Tamar is developing a full-length feature script with the support of The Rabinovich Foundation for Arts.