Alicia I love this movie so much

BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

XoWizIama Excellent adaptation.

maurice yacowar Dror Zahavi's For My Father is a thoughtful and moving Israeli film that balances the Jewish and Palestinian perspectives. As the title suggests, the two central characters take opposite positions vis a vis their duty to their respective fathers. Tarek agrees to become a suicide bomber to restore his father's reputation in the Palestinian community. His father was assaulted when discovered to have served the Israelis in order to facilitate Tarek's travel for his promising football career. His parents don't know his plan but beg him to return home safely. The beautiful 17-year-old Keren revolted against her father's orthodox Judaism and lives banished from her family. This mother too begs her child to return home. Their respective fathers' positions prevent them. Though we don't see Keren's father, his grip is personified by the young orthodox vigilantes who physically threaten Keren if she doesn't abandon her secular independence and submit to her father — and them. A lasciviousness and cruelty undermine their ostensible righteousness.When the now ambivalent Arab terrorist and the Jewish beauty meet, both are outsiders in their own communities. Each is pressured to submit to the will of their respective forbears, their societies' traditions — i.e., fathers. Having originally dismissed Terek, Keren comes to appreciate him, especially after he drives off her tormentors. After their brief idyllic escape, her tormentors have their way. They persuade the neighbourhood deputy that Tarek wielded a knife against them (a lie) and that he must be the terrorist known to have snuck into Tel Aviv (the truth, but with an asterisk: he's no longer certain about his suicidal and murderous mission). The pivotal supporting character is old man Katz. He initially appears as a madman, opening the public mains to waste the water. We learn he and his depressed, indeed suicidal, wife remain in despair over the loss of their soldier son. He died when the army, trying to toughen up their young men, denied him water. This father confronts the traditions that waste the lives of their youth — on either side of the Jewish-Palestinian divide.In Katz Zahavi demonstrates how enemies can bridge their differences, hatreds, cultural inheritances. He figures out why Tarek needs to buy a new detonator from him. But instead of turning him in — as the jealous Jewish vigilantes do — he takes a fatherly interest in the young man and tries to talk him out of his mission. Tarek, who during his enforced weekend in Tel Aviv has experienced the Israeli's humanity, has already modified his mission. He leaves on the beach the nails that would have created massive losses when he blows himself up in the market. His bomb and the army snipers kill only him and wound Katz. To the madness of the continuing 1948 war Katz has lost his new substitute son as well as his own. Karen has lost a potential lover and witnessed another reminder of the extremists' mortal futility — that freezes both sides.

gradyharp FOR MY FATHER (Sof Shavua B'Tel Aviv) is a brilliant little film, a joint German/Israeli production that for once has the courage and wisdom to examine another vantage of a potential suicide bomber. Written by Ido Dror and Jonatan Dror and directed with great sensitivity by Dror Zahavi the story is a brave one, one that takes the viewer into the minds of those who live in Tel Aviv both as Israelis and as youths disillusioned by parental dominance and by the outsiders, or Palestinians.The film opens with a trio of men driving across the border into Tel Aviv to transport one of them as a suicide bomber - the quietly reluctant and sensitive Tarek (Shredi Jabarin). When the bomb fails to explode, he's left stranded in Tel Aviv until he's able to fix the detonator. The fact that Tarek is unable to detonate the bomb and will fail his mission opens the possibility to get to know the young man behind the terrorist mask, an opportunity we have not been offered before. Tarek encounters a young 17-year-old girl Keren (Hili Yalon) who wears earrings and brightly colored hair and short skirts in defiance of her conservative family and is mocked and beaten by young Israeli men for being an outcast. Her only friend is an old disillusioned man Katz (Shlomo Vishinsky) who likewise owns a tacky street vendor booth across from Keren. Tarek encounters Keren, protects her form her assailants, and they develop a close bond - Keren's desire to go swimming with Tarek is rebuffed because Tarek is still carrying the defective suicide bomb device under his shirt. In this one brief weekend we see that both Tarek and Keren have virtues, flaws, and unexpected facets to their personalities. It is also important to note that they both face as much pressure and harassment from their own communities as they do from their counterparts on the other side of the political and cultural divide. And in keeping with the total honesty of the story the ending will surprise and stun the viewer.The film is in Hebrew with English subtitles. The cinematography is excellent and the acting by the three principals as well as by the supporting cast is outstanding. This is a very important film, well deserving of all the honors it has received since it was first released in 2008. Grady Harp

Red-125 Sof Shavua B'Tel Aviv (2008) is a German-Israeli co-production shown in the U.S. as "For My Father." Directed by Dror Zahavi, the film follows a Palestinian, Tarek (Shredi Jabarin), who is sent to Tel Aviv as a suicide bomber. When the bomb fails to explode, he's left stranded in Tel Aviv until he's able to fix the detonator. The entire movie takes place during Tarek's weekend in Tel Aviv.Director Zahavi pulls off a coup, in that he makes his protagonist's mission understandable. It's hard to think of an audience being sympathetic to a terrorist bomber, but we can at least understand the internal logic behind Tarek's actions, even while we recoil at the thought of the suffering a terrorist bomb will cause.Added to this volatile mixture is a young, liberated Israeli woman, Keren, played by the beautiful Israeli actor Hili Yalon. Naturally, there's a chemistry between the young man and woman, although the differences that separate them make Romeo and Juliet's problems appear trivial by comparison.It's interesting that both Tarek and Keren are not cardboard characters. They have virtues, flaws, and unexpected facets to their personalities. Also interesting is the fact that they both face as much pressure and harassment from their own communities as they do from their counterparts on the other side of the political and cultural divide.We saw this film at the extraordinary Rochester Jewish Film Festival, but it will work well on a small screen. It's a provocative, troubling movie, and worth seeking out and watching.

dromasca Seeing this film was a kind of surrealistic experience. On a Friday night in a cinema complex in the center of Tel Aviv, me and my wife were the only two viewers. Private screening. Taking into account that our tickets were not even paid by us but won on a raffle by the Tel Aviv edition of Time Out, this film does not seem to enjoy commercial success.It is certainly deserving more. This film is one in a row of films that started to appear from both sides of the never ending and violent conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, dealing with one of the most cruel aspects - suicide bombings. The approach that is being taken here is to try to humanize without necessarily explaining or excusing, and combine the story with a romantic line.The result is mixed. The film dares too little, Dror Zahavi who studied and works in Germany made a film that looks unexpectedly like conventional Israeli cinema or even more like Israeli commercial theater. His succeeds in the marginal aspects - the life of low-class Tel Aviv a few hundreds of meters from the glamorous aspects of the largest and most contradictory city in Israel. He succeeds less in the principal conflict and fails to says anything new or unexpected on this line.Zahavi is being helped by a team of experienced actors in the secondary roles - especially Shlomo Vishinsky and Rozina Cambos (this is how her Romanian name is correctly spelled :-)) as a slightly strange, pain and loss-stricken aged couple. Shadi Fahr-Al-Din does what you would expect, while Hili Yalon gives in my opinion the best performance in the movie, as the vulnerable young woman finding strength to fight her destiny of being born in an ultra-orthodox Jewish family and build a life of her own. The problem is that good acting cannot feel for the flaws of the story, and especially of its ending. The conflict in the Middle East is tough and complex. Simple and conventional solutions do not work here. So does not work the ending of this film.