It All Begins at Sea

Hakol Matchil Bayam
Director: Eitan Green
Israel 2008 93 mins
Language: Hebrew with English subtitles

Eitan Green’s evocative drama opens on the coast, as young Ashkelon couple Yehuda (Yuval Segal) and Dina Goldstein (Dorit Lev-Ari) take their six-year-old son Udi (Jonathan Alster) for a fateful day at the beach. Idle bickering gives way to terror as the cosseted urbanites are faced - not for the last time - with the precarious nature of life and parenthood.Two further ‘scenes’ set six and finally eight years later see Udi (Ron Jaegermann) dealing with the perils of adolescence and the tumultuous arrival of his baby sister.

Coloured by Green’s memories of his own childhood, It All Begins at Sea offers an absorbing and unusually frank perspective on themes of mortality, masculinity and loneliness.Among the uniformly excellent performances,Tzahi Grad and Asher Tsarfati make the most of their off-the-wall supporting roles as brusque lifeguard Tuvia and elder brother Baruch, who has a nasty habit of terrorising his neighbours. SM

Screening with
Premiere

Schlimazeltov!

Dir. Christopher Thomas Allen | UK I 2009 I English

Maybe some people are just born unlucky? This documentary film weaves together a diverse collection of voices from London’s Jewish community to explore the concept of “luck” or “mazel”.