‘I wanted to express the very bizarre and extreme reality of these trips, what it’s really like to be there at that age,” said Asaf Saban, the writer/director of , a new feature film that opened on Thursday and looks at teens on a high-school class , where they visit death camps – a quintessentially Israeli rite of passage. Saban knew that making about the reality of such trips, rather than the ideal, would not be easy. But he has created a thoughtful, compelling film, well-written and well acted, that illuminates the complexities of one of these trips in the ’90s.
It neither sentimentalizes the characters’ emotions nor condemns the teens for just being teens. He did that through creating several quirky, relatable characters, among them Frisch (Yoav Bavly,) a sensitive guy, who has a crush on Nitzan (Naomi Harari,) an ostensibly relaxed, confident girl. But Nitzan is more troubled than she seems, and the trip brings out strange emotions in her, which cause her to take an action on one of that is very human but obviously wrong.
Ido (Leib Levin) is a brash extrovert focused on usual teen concerns like girls and drinking, and doesn’t suddenly become an altruist in Poland. spotlights how there is some manipulation built into these trips, as the teens have group discussions in which they are encouraged to show emotion, the more intense the better. The difficulties created by this are illustrated by the character of Yosef (Ezra Dagan, in a heartrending performance,) a.