This tale of a woman tending to a younger sister with special needs has depth and compassion
This heartfelt, moving and honest tale of a young woman tending to the special needs of her younger sister in present-day Israel was partly inspired by writer/star Liron Ben-Shlush’s experiences with her own much-loved sibling. Dana Ivgy researched the role of Gabby at the hostel where Ben-Shlush’s sister now resides, and she brings to the screen a compassionate conviction that director Asaf Korman (Ben-Shlush’s husband) takes full advantage of. While it seems at first that Gabby is the needy one who leaves little space for her older sister’s private life, it soon becomes clear that it is Chelli who cannot bear the prospect of separation. Yaakov Zada Daniel does an excellent job of keeping interloper Zohar’s true motives uncertain, leaving us as anxious as Chelli about how far to trust her boyfriend.
This heartfelt, moving and honest tale of a young woman tending to the special needs of her younger sister in present-day Israel was partly inspired by writer/star Liron Ben-Shlush’s experiences with her own much-loved sibling. Dana Ivgy researched the role of Gabby at the hostel where Ben-Shlush’s sister now resides, and she brings to the screen a compassionate conviction that director Asaf Korman (Ben-Shlush’s husband) takes full advantage of. While it seems at first that Gabby is the needy one who leaves little space for her older sister’s private life, it soon becomes clear that it is Chelli who cannot bear the prospect of separation. Yaakov Zada Daniel does an excellent job of keeping interloper Zohar’s true motives uncertain, leaving us as anxious as Chelli about how far to trust her boyfriend.
- 3/13/2016
- by Mark Kermode, Observer film critic
- The Guardian - Film News
This unflinching Israeli drama about two codependent, semi-feral young women leavens the bleakness with flashes of humour
School caretaker Chelli (Liron Ben Shlush, also the film’s screenwriter) lives in a dingy Haifa apartment with her sister Gaby (the extraordinary Dana Ivgy), a 24-year-old woman whose limited verbal skills and behaviour indicate autism, although no one uses the word. Lost in a fog of codependence, the two sisters live in semi-feral squalor, with Chelli locking Gaby alone in the apartment while she’s out during the day rather than seeking help.
Under pressure from social services, Chelli eventually enrols Gaby in a daycare centre, but finds herself feeling jealous of the bond her sister forms with the chief carer. Likewise, a weird kind of territorialism and severe boundary issues threaten to poison Chelli’s new relationship with coworker Zohar (Yaakov Daniel Zada).
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School caretaker Chelli (Liron Ben Shlush, also the film’s screenwriter) lives in a dingy Haifa apartment with her sister Gaby (the extraordinary Dana Ivgy), a 24-year-old woman whose limited verbal skills and behaviour indicate autism, although no one uses the word. Lost in a fog of codependence, the two sisters live in semi-feral squalor, with Chelli locking Gaby alone in the apartment while she’s out during the day rather than seeking help.
Under pressure from social services, Chelli eventually enrols Gaby in a daycare centre, but finds herself feeling jealous of the bond her sister forms with the chief carer. Likewise, a weird kind of territorialism and severe boundary issues threaten to poison Chelli’s new relationship with coworker Zohar (Yaakov Daniel Zada).
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- 3/10/2016
- by Leslie Felperin
- The Guardian - Film News
Israeli Film Critics Association chooses Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel as best international film.
The Israeli Film Critics Association selected its best films of 2014. Zero Motivation, written and directed by Talya Lavie, was named best film of the year. Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, distributed in Israel by Forum Film, was named best international film of 2014.
Sasson Gabai was chosen as best actor for Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem. Dana Ivgy was named best actress for her portrayal of Zohar, a disgruntled soldier in Zero Motivation.
Newcomer Talya Lavie was chosen as best director and best screenwriter of the year for her debut film Zero Motivation. A supporting actress in the film, Tamara Klingon, was named Discovery of the Year.
The critics gave their Artistic Achievement Award went to cinematographer Nadav Hekselman for his work on Funeral at Noon.
Films had to be released in Israel between January and mid-December this year...
The Israeli Film Critics Association selected its best films of 2014. Zero Motivation, written and directed by Talya Lavie, was named best film of the year. Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, distributed in Israel by Forum Film, was named best international film of 2014.
Sasson Gabai was chosen as best actor for Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem. Dana Ivgy was named best actress for her portrayal of Zohar, a disgruntled soldier in Zero Motivation.
Newcomer Talya Lavie was chosen as best director and best screenwriter of the year for her debut film Zero Motivation. A supporting actress in the film, Tamara Klingon, was named Discovery of the Year.
The critics gave their Artistic Achievement Award went to cinematographer Nadav Hekselman for his work on Funeral at Noon.
Films had to be released in Israel between January and mid-December this year...
- 12/14/2014
- by wendy.mitchell@screendaily.com (Wendy Mitchell)
- ScreenDaily
Writer-director Talya Lavie was inspired by her own time in the Israeli Defense Force and paints a picture of day-dreaming, gender politics and high heels
If you show a staple gun in the first act it has to go off in the third. But that’s about the only dramatic principle to which the characters in Zero Motivation adhere. Normally that would be a problem, seeing as how this film is set in the army, but it’s not like we’re on the battle lines. Writer-director Talya Lavie drew from her own personal experience in the Israeli Defense Forces, setting her first feature in the dullest administrative office in a remote desert base. The elevator pitch “Girls meets M*A*S*H” may seem a tad reductive, but it’s apt. The angst is the same though the specifics, and urgency, has changed.
The Non-Commissioned Officer in Charge of Paper and Shredding,...
If you show a staple gun in the first act it has to go off in the third. But that’s about the only dramatic principle to which the characters in Zero Motivation adhere. Normally that would be a problem, seeing as how this film is set in the army, but it’s not like we’re on the battle lines. Writer-director Talya Lavie drew from her own personal experience in the Israeli Defense Forces, setting her first feature in the dullest administrative office in a remote desert base. The elevator pitch “Girls meets M*A*S*H” may seem a tad reductive, but it’s apt. The angst is the same though the specifics, and urgency, has changed.
The Non-Commissioned Officer in Charge of Paper and Shredding,...
- 12/5/2014
- by Jordan Hoffman
- The Guardian - Film News
Starting off as a great military/industrial complex send-up, the story flounders in the home stretch when it grasps at the serious and ends up in slapstick.Talya Larvie’s military dramedy is fresh, untamed and funny. This is amazing, considering it shreds one of the top military organizations in the world. Featuring the women of mandatory conscription, the setting is a desolate Israeli military outpost. Critical, no doubt, to security, the female draftees treat their service like teenagers acting out against curfew.In the opening scenes, Zohar (Dana Ivgy) returns from weekend leave with Daffi (Nelly Tagar) to the barbed wire, dust and […]...
- 12/5/2014
- by Ron Wilkinson
- Monsters and Critics
Band of Girls: Lavie’s Acerbic, Confident Debut
Exacerbated ennui is explored to comedic effect in Tayla Lavie’s striking directorial debut, Zero Motivation, which explores life on an Israeli military base through the perspective of several female soldiers. Groups of humans not taken seriously and treated with demeaning abandon tend to disengage from rational behaviors, and Lavie explores the rampant pettiness born out of being kept in certain positions without any opportunity to grow. Some have criticized Lavie for abstaining from composing the film as a more complicated and transgressive portrait of the reductive nature of war, in general. Coming from an area where cinematic offerings are saturated and inflected with the constant, aggravated unrest transpiring there, Lavie’s film is already a subtly wicked statement, and her focus on the trivialities of one group of women on one military base serves as the subtle microcosm for the enduring...
Exacerbated ennui is explored to comedic effect in Tayla Lavie’s striking directorial debut, Zero Motivation, which explores life on an Israeli military base through the perspective of several female soldiers. Groups of humans not taken seriously and treated with demeaning abandon tend to disengage from rational behaviors, and Lavie explores the rampant pettiness born out of being kept in certain positions without any opportunity to grow. Some have criticized Lavie for abstaining from composing the film as a more complicated and transgressive portrait of the reductive nature of war, in general. Coming from an area where cinematic offerings are saturated and inflected with the constant, aggravated unrest transpiring there, Lavie’s film is already a subtly wicked statement, and her focus on the trivialities of one group of women on one military base serves as the subtle microcosm for the enduring...
- 12/4/2014
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
A “Staple” Female-centric Portrait: Lavie Adds Dark Charm to Bureaucratic Military Milieu
With a subject so entrenched with weight and political correctness, there seems to be unspoken set of expectations that come with the territory of any narrative involving the testosterone and blood-drenched subjects of military, war, and combat. These expectations shape but also restrict the genre itself: as a romantic comedy is to the female audience, so is the war film to the male one. By creating a darkly comedic template and by utilizing a fully-fledged female ensemble, Talya Lavie artfully subverts such expectations in Zero Motivation, and by doing so, redefines the boundaries of the genre and the potential of its reach without sacrificing great storytelling.
At an isolated Israeli base camp in the middle of the desert, best friends Daffi (Nelly Tagar) and Zohar (Dana Ivgy) struggle to find their footing in a place that only seems...
With a subject so entrenched with weight and political correctness, there seems to be unspoken set of expectations that come with the territory of any narrative involving the testosterone and blood-drenched subjects of military, war, and combat. These expectations shape but also restrict the genre itself: as a romantic comedy is to the female audience, so is the war film to the male one. By creating a darkly comedic template and by utilizing a fully-fledged female ensemble, Talya Lavie artfully subverts such expectations in Zero Motivation, and by doing so, redefines the boundaries of the genre and the potential of its reach without sacrificing great storytelling.
At an isolated Israeli base camp in the middle of the desert, best friends Daffi (Nelly Tagar) and Zohar (Dana Ivgy) struggle to find their footing in a place that only seems...
- 12/4/2014
- by Amanda Yam
- IONCINEMA.com
The thing about hating your job and not giving a shit is that it can happen to anyone, anytime — it might even explain the longueurs late in most two-term presidencies. In Talya Lavie's bored, biting comedy Zero Motivation, aggrieved ennui hits right in the heart of the Intifada.
Not that war ever touches the go-nowhere days depicted here. Conscripted Israeli BFFs Zohar (Dana Ivgy) and Daffi (Nelly Tagar) are over it all in ways we immediately recognize, from the movies and from life: They're young folks tasked with meaningless work by authority too clueless to catch all the jokes spitballed at it. Officer Rama (Shani Klein) browbeats her Minesweeper-playing subordinates to stop giggling and take care of their office busywork. Flustered, early on, Rama demands that the ...
Not that war ever touches the go-nowhere days depicted here. Conscripted Israeli BFFs Zohar (Dana Ivgy) and Daffi (Nelly Tagar) are over it all in ways we immediately recognize, from the movies and from life: They're young folks tasked with meaningless work by authority too clueless to catch all the jokes spitballed at it. Officer Rama (Shani Klein) browbeats her Minesweeper-playing subordinates to stop giggling and take care of their office busywork. Flustered, early on, Rama demands that the ...
- 12/3/2014
- Village Voice
Stationed in the middle of dusty nowhere, the girls of the administration hub in an Israeli military post spend their time making coffees for the senior officers and doing boring office duties day in and day out. It's far from what we expect in the army life. No one wants to be there and longs for their discharge dates. Daffi (Nelly Tagar), a little waif not meant for military service nor any kind of simple office work, dreams of being transferred to glamorous Tel Aviv when not crying her eyes out. Her best buddy, sassy mouthed Zohar (Dana Ivgy), gets by being indifferent to the task given by senior officers and playing minesweeper on her computer all day. Rama (Shani Klein), a strict administrative officer who...
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- 12/2/2014
- Screen Anarchy
Here's Diana on one of the big winners of the Tribeca Film Festival...
A young woman saves a seat on a bus for her friend. The friend runs on and all is well, or at least until the driver tells everyone that they have to exit the bus and get on again. The two women shout dibs on their seats, but the jump cut reveals it was to no avail, with both standing in the midst of the jam-packed aisle for the very long and arduous bus ride ahead of them. No, this isn’t a Megabus or a school bus, but it is on its way to a camp of sorts: an army base in middle-of-nowhere Israel. These two women are army secretaries, serving their mandatory two years out handling mail, shredding paper and having their rearends ogled as they serve coffee and biscuits to predominantly male officers. Loosely...
A young woman saves a seat on a bus for her friend. The friend runs on and all is well, or at least until the driver tells everyone that they have to exit the bus and get on again. The two women shout dibs on their seats, but the jump cut reveals it was to no avail, with both standing in the midst of the jam-packed aisle for the very long and arduous bus ride ahead of them. No, this isn’t a Megabus or a school bus, but it is on its way to a camp of sorts: an army base in middle-of-nowhere Israel. These two women are army secretaries, serving their mandatory two years out handling mail, shredding paper and having their rearends ogled as they serve coffee and biscuits to predominantly male officers. Loosely...
- 4/25/2014
- by Diana D Drumm
- FilmExperience
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