Portman to star in Israeli film

According to a profile on Natalie Portman in The Guardian, her next project is going to be a film by Israeli director Amos Gitai called Freezone. She’ll play an American-Jewish girl in Israel who falls in love with a married blogger who lives in Modi’in and writes long-winded synopses about stupid Israeli reality shows. Yeah. Sure.

Her next project, however, has taken her back to Israel, which she considers to be her true home (her father is Israeli and her family moved to the US when she was three). Plans to make The Smoking Room with Slacker director Richard Linklater have been “put off indefinitely”, and work is just beginning on a film with Israeli director Amos Gitai. Appropriately, she is to play a Jewish-American girl, and has been busy steeping herself in her native country’s history and culture, not only as research but also to explore her own heritage: she has been studying at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, has just finished a novel by David Grossman and is working her way through Yitzhak Rabin’s memoirs. While everything in Israel is political, she says, the film is not explicitly so. She speaks passionately about the conflict, but for her, “living in Israel is really beautiful. One of the most shocking things is how peaceful it feels.”



And one of the nicest things, she says, is that she has no idea what’s going on in Hollywood – she hasn’t seen the other films and doesn’t know who else is in contention for Oscars. Really? “I think it is a really beautiful thing that we have recognition within our industry – but it’s not that important.”

A beautiful thing indeed.

I think this is great news, not only for Natalie but for Israeli cinema. Gitai is one of Israel’s most popular and talented directors. Kadosh was quite successful in America a couple of years ago. You can read about his film Kippur in one of Shai’s Friday Miscellaneous Pop Culture Entries from a few weeks back.

UPDATE: From Shai, the blogosphere’s undisputed king of Israeli pop culture:

You might make a case that Gitai is one of the most talented Israeli directors, (I find him a bit showy and unfocused myself), but I definitely wouldn’t call him one of the most popular, at least not here.

Gitai’s films tend to get ignored by everyone except for a small group of cinephiles in Tel Aviv, and I’m not sure that even they like his movies.

Also, the Israeli critics hate his guts. The movie critic on Galei Tzahal gave a review where he reeled off a long list of adjectives like “ugly”, “pretentious”, “sophomoric”, “uneven”, and “unfair”, then concluded by saying “And this is Gitai’s most accessible film.”

Still and all, nice to see young Ms. Portman getting back to her roots.

Thanks Shai!

Tags: israeli movies, natalie portman