Year Zero

Colour, 35 mm
Israel, 2004, 130 min
IP – International premiere
Section: Another View

Synopsis

It seems to happen at some point in everyone’s life: you are permitted (or forced) to start over again from square one. That very thing happens to the protagonists of Israeli director Joseph Pitchhadze’s latest film. Employing the popular multiple-stories genre, the director offers a portrait of contemporary life as seen in the everyday realities of several characters. The protagonists, connected by various relationships, must come to terms with unexpected, though transformational, reversals. Egoistical real estate agent Reuven is bothered by the fact that his wife suddenly becomes pregnant. A single mother named Anna has hit absolute bottom: Reuben kicks her out of their apartment, and when she cannot find a job she ends up as a prostitute. Then she meets forty-year-old Matti who is somehow mixed up in the underworld. A soundman named Frank becomes close to a co-worker, Reuben’s wife, and gets to know his biological father, a onetime member of his parents’ punk band.... These and many other people meet (or don’t) and their lives unavoidably connect.

About the director

Joseph Pitchhadze (b. 1965, Tbilisi) emigrated with his family to Israel from Georgia in 1972. He graduated in film and television from Tel Aviv University. After the short films Dreaming in Russian (Holem b’rusit, 1990) and Bad Days (Yamim rai’im, 1993), he debuted with the post-modern, black-and-white thriller Under Western Eyes (Leneged finayim ma’araviyot, 1996), screened at Berlin. Another thriller followed, Besame Mucho (2000), this time set in night-time Tel Aviv, then the psychological drama Year Zero (Shnat efes, 2004). Pitchhadze not only directs, but writes and produces his movies as well.