EXCLUSIVE: Here’s your first trailer for writer-director Avi Nesher‘s October 7 film Our Loves, which is vying for 12 Israeli Academy Awards (Ophirs) later today, before its North American premiere at Toronto tomorrow.
The film’s synopsis reads: “Five ordinary men and women, each trapped in a failing relationship and convinced they are living the worst day of their lives, are suddenly thrust into a national catastrophe that shatters their private despair. In that rupture, each must confront unresolved wounds, seek redemption and a new beginning.”
Starring are Shalom Michaelshvili, Magi Azarzar, Yaniv Biton, Lena Fraifeld, Daniel Gimpel, Noa Cohen, Evelin Hagoel, Hadas Yaron, Chancela “Sean” Mongoza, Hisham Suleiman, and Amir Banai.
The Israeli Oscar hopeful is a United King Films, SIPUR Studios, and Artomas Communications Production made in association with FOX Entertainment Studios, Access Entertainment and Moriah Media.
Producers are Moshe Edery and Leon Edery of United; Emilio Schenker and Gideon Tadmor of SIPUR; Avi Nesher for Artomas; and Danny Cohen of Access.
Exec producers include Shari Redstone, SIPUR; Len Blavatnik and Emily Blavatnik, Access Entertainment; Fernando Szew, FOX Entertainment Studios; Jim Berk and Sheldon Rabinowitz, Moriah Media; Chemi Peres, Michal Even, Chen Even. It was made with the support of the Paul E. Singer Foundation.
Filmmaker Nesher, who lost his son seven years ago in an accident, said of his journey to make the film: “I know a thing or two about succumbing to the black hole’s overwhelming gravitational pull, and just giving up, wallowing in a mire. Yet seven years ago, when my beloved son Ari was killed in an accident, I reached for cinema to illuminate a path out of the black hole and hopefully rediscover purpose and meaning.”
He continued: “On October 6, our lead characters had reached their breaking point. Each of them, in their own way, had lost direction, lost hope, and no longer believed that a different life was possible. Then they are thrown into an event that tears reality – and everything they thought they knew – apart, forcing them to confront the unresolved truths, regrets, the emotional wounds they had long tried to outrun and the inevitable necessity for change, both on personal and national levels, offering them the possibility of redemption: a second chance.
“My own personal tragedy has led me to the very precipice of the abyss. As I gazed into the abyss, the abyss, as Nietzsche warned, gazed back at me. There was a temptation to jump into the darkness as a solution to it all, but then I remembered another darkness that had always been very present in my life: the darkness in a movie theatre just before a film starts. In that moment, I also saw a possible path for redemption, and I started writing.”
Nesher’s previous credits include Past Life, The Other Story and The Matchmaker.