Directed by Keren Yedaya
Narrative
Israel Luxembourg Germany | 2020 | 93 min
In Hebrew, and Arabic
with English subtitles
After warming hearts at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2019, award-winning filmmaker Karen Yedaya’s RED FIELDS is a poetic, at times surrealistic, but ultimately sensitive adaptation of the legendary anti-war Israeli rock opera MAMI. Written by Hillel Mittelpunkt, MAMI became a cult play in the 1980’s. Mami, beautifully played here by Neta Elkayam, is a young Sephardi woman who works as a gas station cashier in a poor Israeli development town in the southern periphery, and dreams of a better future with her beloved husband Nissim upon his return from the front. Everything changes when Nissim is brought home paralyzed. Mami decides to rewrite her destiny by leaving for the big city, Tel Aviv. With sixteen songs recorded live on screen by Dudu Tassa and Nir Maimon, this cinematic musical breaks ground in format, storytelling, and creativity.
Keren Yedaya — Director
Keren Yedaya is an award winning Israeli director. She has directed the features OR (Caméra d’Or winner at the Cannes Film Festival, 2004), JAFFA (Cannes Film Festival, 2009), and THAT LOVELY GIRL (Un Certain Regard, Cannes Film Festival, 2014), as well as the shorts ELINOR (1994), LULU (1999), and UNDERWEAR (2001). RED FIELDS (2020), her latest feature film, premièred at the Toronto International Film Festival and has won the Israeli Ophir Awards for Best Original Soundtrack and Best Sound Mixing. Yedaya is known as a feminist and activist for women’s rights. Yedaya trained at the Camera Obscura School of Art in Tel Aviv.