‘It’s not a world that I knew much about before I made this movie,” said Erez Tadmor, the director of the film Children of Nobody, which opened throughout Israel December 21.
The movie tells the story of problems at a group home for troubled boys and adolescents in south Tel Aviv. “In every movie, I try to tell the story of a different world, something that is remote from my life, to take on a new challenge.”
Tadmor is one of Israel’s most successful directors and his movies have tackled a wide variety of subjects. His 2022 movie, Matchmaking, a comic look at the ultra-Orthodox dating world, was one of the most popular movies of the year.
He has also made serious dramas, such as Strangers, the story of a romance between a Palestinian woman and an Israeli man in Europe, which was co-directed by Guy Nattiv.
The movie's genre
Most of his films mix comedy and more serious storylines, such as A Matter of Size, co-directed by Sharon Maymon, which was about a group of Israeli men who get tired of trying to diet down to their ideal weight and decide to become sumo wrestlers, and which had a great deal to say about prejudices based on body image.
In 2019, inspired by his family’s experience with fertility treatments, he made The Art of Waiting, about a young couple who have difficulty conceiving. It was co-written by actor Roy Assaf, who also co-wrote and stars in Children of Nobody.
“When I made Matchmaking, I didn’t know anything about the ultra-Orthodox, a very interesting and wonderful world, and I learned all about it. And with Children of Nobody, it was a world I didn’t know existed.”
Children of Nobody tells the story of an informally run group home for at-risk youth in Tel Aviv, which was started by Margalit (Tiki Dayan), a big-hearted woman who is a surrogate mother to these boys. She is helped by Jackie (Roy Assaf), who came to her as a teenager and now lives in a shack on her property, working with the children and doing odd jobs around the place. But the home, which is in the mostly gentrified Neveh Tzedek neighborhood, is on a piece of land which is incredibly attractive to real-estate developers.
Margalit, who lives there in a key-money arrangement, will receive nothing if the home is sold, and she and her boys will be out on the street. She fights against the sale, and also defends the home against a social worker (Ornella Bess), who is concerned that it isn’t run by the book. When Margalit can no longer continue to run the place, Jackie steps up, but finds himself in a struggle he doesn’t have the tools to win.
Assaf began volunteering at a home much like the one portrayed in the movie, and Tadmor went there with him and spent time with the woman who ran it, getting to know the story of the place. They helped the woman as best they could in her fight against real-estate developers. “It was such a strong story, it was easy to write the script,” he said. The stories of the boys in the movie are based closely on the actual children and young men who still lived there or had grown up there, and Tadmor and Assaf conducted extensive interviews with them.
“These children are taken off the street, the lucky ones, anyway, and the people who run these places become like their family,” said Tadmor. “They really save lives. These kids could have died on the street. They give them a home and they give them love and a life. They take them to school and to after-school activities, they act like parents, as much as they can. They don’t have much money but with the little they have, they give so much. It touched me, and I thought, I didn’t know that this existed in Israel. It’s time that everyone knows now.”
Assaf has won two Ophir Awards for Best Actor, and Dayan is one of Israel’s most beloved actresses. “We always knew it would be Tiki Dayan for the role of Margalit. Roy has done theater, and he admires Tiki, for all theater work, as well as her films... Roy is an amazing actor, he gives all of himself, everything, to all the roles he does.”
But Tadmor said he deliberately took unknown actors, not kids who had been in children’s television, for the key roles of the boys who live in the home. As much as possible, he cast actors who had similar backgrounds to the characters, and they were able to help him make the film more authentic. Some of them enjoyed the experience of working on the film so much that they are now thinking of continuing as actors. But as much as they learned from him, “I learned a lot from them,” Tadmor says.
“It was important to me to get everything right, and they helped.”
One aspect of the lives of these young people that the public may not be aware of, Tadmor said, was their struggle to be allowed to serve in the IDF. One of the characters in the movie, Yossi (Jeremy Pinto), yearns to serve in the army, but because he has a criminal record for petty crime, he is not accepted.
“To these kids, to be in the army is to be part of mainstream society. They crave it, but often they are not allowed to join,” said Tadmor. One of the real-life models for the characters, who has a small role in the film, eventually was able to become a border policeman. “He sent me pictures of himself in uniform,” said Tadmor. “He was proud. When they manage to make it to the army, they feel like they are like everyone else.”
He also learned about the struggles of such places to hang on as the older buildings in their neighborhoods are bought and destroyed. “Behind all these fancy new buildings, there are these old places, falling down, and they have to fight to stay in them,” he said.
He is currently in pre-production with a sequel to Matchmaking, and also finishing up a movie called Soda, with Lior Raz, Rotem Sela, and Zohar Strauss. This movie is based on the story of his grandfather, who was a partisan in Poland during the Holocaust and settled some scores after the war in Israel with those who betrayed him and his brothers-in-arms back in Europe. “It’s a movie I’ve wanted to make for more than a decade,” he said.
He said he was comfortable with the decision to release the Children of Nobody during the war.
“The Israeli movie-going public, like every sector of Israeli society, has to return to its usual routine... We have to try to bring people back to the movies. Besides being an artist, I see myself as someone who touches people’s hearts. I think a movie like Children of Nobody is suited to this period. It’s not a comedy, it’s dramatic, but it’s not too heavy, it’s a movie that can find its public, that can elicit emotions, that can reach many people, even at a time like this... It’s very important because these children – they’re us. They’re part of us.”