Tehilim (DVD)

Winner of the Grand Prize at Tokyo’s 2007 FilmEx festival competition, Tehilim places French-born writer-director Raphael Nadjari at the forefront of Israel’s ongoing cinematic new wave.  In contemporary Jerusalem, an average middle class Jewish family balances the rituals of family, friends, religion and workaday life. But when middle-aged father and husband Eli (Shmuel Vilozni) unaccountably vanishes after a fluke car accident, the ensuing legal and emotional crisis gradually immerses Eli’s spouse and two young sons in a muted real-life nightmare redefining the boundaries of everything they know, love and believe.  While wife Alma (Limor Goldstein) navigates a bureaucratic maze of social services and paperwork, elder son Menachem (Michael Moshonov – Late Marriage) has his fragile faith and elusive adolescent peace of mind shaken to the core.

Leading a pitch-perfect ensemble of professional and non-professional actors, “Michael Moshonov imbues his character with a mystery and ambiguity that young people in cinema are often missing.” (Le Monde)   An “intimate, disturbing tale” (Variety) that “gets under your skin and stays with you,” (International Herald Tribune) Tehilim is a low-key existential thriller that uses circumstantial fallout from random tragedy to dramatically x-ray the fragile bonds tenuously holding individuals, relationships, families, and religions together.