The nominations for the Ophir Awards, the prizes of the Israeli Academy of Film and Television, were announced Monday and Avi Nesher’s Image of Victory and Eran Kolirin’s Let There Be Morning led the list with 15 nominations each.
The other nominated films in the Best Picture category are Gidi Dar’s Legend of Destruction (which received seven nominations), Nadav Lapid’s Ahed’s Knee (with eight), and Dani Rosenberg’s The Death of the Cinema and My Father Too (with nine).
The movie that wins the Best Picture Award becomes Israel’s official selection to be considered for a nomination in the Best International Feature category (formerly called Best Foreign Language Film).
The directors of the five Best Picture nominees are all nominated for Best Director. In the Best Screenplay category, Nesher is nominated for Image of Victory, Dar and Shuli Rand for Legend of Destruction, Rosenberg and Itay Kohay for The Death of Cinema and My Father Too, Kolirin for Let There Be Morning and Pini Tavger for More Than I Deserve.
In the Best Actress category, the nominees are Avigail Harari for Honeymood, Ana Dubrovitzki for More Than I Deserve, Joy Rieger for Image of Victory, Juna Suleiman for Let There Be Morning and Nur Fibak for Ahed’s Knee.
In the Best Actor category, the nominees are Avshalom Pollak for Ahed’s Knee, Imri Biton for The House on Fin Street, Alex Bakri for Let There Be Morning, Amir Khoury for Image of Victory, Micha Prudovsky for More Than I Deserve and Marek Rozenbaum for The Death of Cinema and My Father Too.
The Best Supporting Actress nominees are Orly Silbersatz for Honeymood, Izabel Ramadan for Let There Be Morning, Meshi Kleinstein for Image of Victory, Noa Koler for The Death of Cinema and My Father Too and Reymonde Amsallem for The House on Fin Street.
The Best Supporting Actor nominees are Ehab Elias Salami for Let There Be Morning, Yaakov Zada Daniel for More Than I Deserve, Meir Suissa for Honeymood, Ala Dakka for Image of Victory and Roni Kuban for The Death of Cinema and My Father Too.
In the documentary category, the nominees are Maya Sarfaty’s Love It Was Not, about a relationship between a concentration camp inmate and a Nazi; Barak Heymann’s High Maintenance (aka Danny Karavan), a portrait of an iconoclastic sculptor; Shlomi Eldar’s Riding with a Spy, a look at the life of whistleblower Anat Kamm; Michal Weits’s Blue Box, the story behind the Jewish National Fund; and Vanessa Lapa’s Speer Goes to Hollywood, about the Nazi architect’s attempt to turn his memoir into a movie.
While this has been a tough year for moviegoing, these nominees reflect the continuing vitality of the Israeli film industry. Nesher’s Image of Victory is a fact-based story about both the Israeli and Egyptian sides in the War of Independence, featuring both Hebrew and Arabic dialogue. In a fitting coincidence, Meir Suissa, who starred in Nesher’s first two films, The Troupe and Dizengoff 99, over 40 years ago, is nominated in the Best Supporting category for Talya Lavie’s comedy, Honeymood.
Ironically, Ahed’s Knee, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Jury Prize there, is a look at a distressed filmmaker, angry over what he sees as encroaching government censorship, and it received nods from the government-supported Academy in nearly every category for which it was eligible. Let There Be Morning, about a Palestinian who gets stuck in his village after a wedding, also had its premiere at Cannes this year. Rosenberg’s The Death of the Cinema and My Father Too won the top prize at the 2020 Jerusalem Film Festival, which was held online. It tells a complicated story of a dying father and son who bond over cinema.
The Ophir Awards will be presented at a ceremony in early October.
Ironically, Ahed’s Knee, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Jury Prize there, is a look at a distressed filmmaker, angry over what he sees as encroaching government censorship, and it received nods from the government-supported Academy in nearly every category for which it was eligible. Let There Be Morning, about a Palestinian who gets stuck in his village after a wedding, also had its premiere at Cannes this year. Rosenberg’s The Death of the Cinema and My Father Too won the top prize at the 2020 Jerusalem Film Festival, which was held online. It tells a complicated story of a dying father and son who bond over cinema.
The Ophir Awards will be presented at a ceremony in early October.