Angels, demons and Israelis

May 31, 2009 - 10:43 AM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: General, Movies, Pop Culture, Profiles 

Ayelet Zurer - the Julia Roberts of Israel.

Ayelet Zurer - the Julia Roberts of Israel.

These are heady times to be an Israeli actress. Ayelet Zurer is on billboards throughout the world along with Tom Hanks for their film Angels and Demons. And she’s been receiving some great reviews.

And now Liraz Charhi has been cast in Fair Game, director Doug Liman’s drama about outed CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson. Naomi Watts already has been cast as Plame. Sean Penn plays her husband, ambassador Joseph Wilson.

But she’ll have a hard time achieving the success that Zurer has managed since being cast as Eric Bana’s husband in Steven Spielberg’s Munich four years ago. The Los Angeles Time recently published a flattering profile of Zurer, calling her the Julia Roberts of Israel.

According to director Ron Howard, Zurer beat out eight other actresses who also had screen-tested with Hanks for the role of truth-seeking Italian physicist Vittoria Vetra.

“There’s something very unself-conscious and honest and earthy about Ayelet,” says Howard, “and yet she has the capacity to deal with the scientific jargon in a way that felt honest and she felt comfortable with it.”

The story goes on to describe her upbringing in Israel as the child of a Holocaust survivor.

Despite her lightheartedness, Zurer seems to possess a kind of subtle stoic quality, which might be genetic or simply the product of growing up in the Middle East. She is a child of the Holocaust — her mother, then just a 5-year- old in Czechoslovakia, lived through the war by hiding out in a convent, and later reunited with her family for only a year in the forest. In the ’50s, she immigrated to Israel, and ultimately married Zurer’s father, a government worker who painted on the side.

There were oil paints in Zurer’s Tel Aviv home, and “everybody expected me to do something with painting,” but then genes overtook her, she explains. “What happened was I became this pretty girl from a non-pretty girl and was dragged into doing all kinds of things on stage. I found it to be really fun, but never thought I’d pursue it, because I was too shy.”

She did her required army stint – singing for the troops as part of a special arts division. She admits that whenever she’s asked about her army experience, “I always get this redness in my skin and face. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t carry a gun, thank you very much.”

After her army service, Zurer went on to study acting in New York before ultimately returning to Israel, where she won the 2003 Israeli Oscar equivalent for her performance as a woman who lost her husband in a terrorist attack in the dramedy Nina’s Tragedies and later starred in the TV series “B’Tipul,” the forerunner of HBO’s “In Treatment.”

Then Hollywood beckoned, and a star was born. Let’s see if Liraz Charhi can repeat the feat.

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Focusing in on Haifa

October 15, 2008 - 10:40 AM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: General, Movies, Pop Culture 

Funny what a difference two years makes. In the throes of the Second Lebanon War in the summer of 2006, the northern Israeli city of Haifa is thriving once again. And the proof in the pudding is the 24th Haifa International Film Festival, which is running during the Succot holiday from October 14-21 at the Haifa Cinematheque.

In addition to featuring over 150 films from all over the world, the festival is hosting guests like Jeanne Moreau, star of Truffaut’s Jules et Jim, director Paul Schrader, British actress Kelly Harrison, and Joseph Fiennes, best known for starring in Shakespeare in Love. Fiennes’ latest movie, Spring 41, was directed by Israeli Uri Barbash and is being screened at the festival. Moreau appears in Amos Gitai’s Plus Tard Tu Comprendras (One Day You’ll Understand), a movie about a woman who has kept her past as a Holocaust survivor a secret from her children, and she’ll receive an award at the festival.

vicky.jpgThe festival opened on Tuesday with the Israeli premier of Woody Allen’s latest offering Vicky Cristina Barcelona, starring Scarlett Johansson, Penelope Cruz, and Javier Bardem. Original reported stated that the Woodman would be attending the opening, but alas, it was not to be.

Homegrown talent Ayelet Zurer, known internationally for her role in Steven Spielberg’s Munich, will attend screenings of her new movie, Fugitive Pieces, about a child whose family is killed in Nazi-occupied Poland and grows up longing for his lost sister.

And among the seven Israeli feature films being screened is Castles in the Air, Broken Wings’ director Nir Bergman’s look at a family gathering for their parents’ 35th wedding anniversary. Two films focus on the host city of Haifa and the effects the war had on it – Oren Gvili’s Secured Space looks at how that conflict affects a couple trying to hold its wedding, and Tamar Glezerman’s The Other War follows three women during that conflict.

So while it may rain on in most of the country during ‘hol hamoed’, dampening hikes and camping trips, the screening rooms at the Haifa Cinemateque will be dry, warm and full of provocative films. Thanks to The Jerusalem Post’s Hannah Brown for providing the information on the films.

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