Directed by Shira Geffen
Renowned Jeruselum artist Michel (French actress Sarah Adler) has a rude awakening when she bumps her head after her bed breaks. Her priority is to order another bed from Ikea but she is obviously suffering some memory loss. Her life keeps intruding as she struggles to assemble her new bed. When she finds that a screw is missing, she ccomplains to Ikea and Arab worker Nadina (Samira Saraya) loses her job packing screws.
Nadina has a few problems of her own and both women are dissatisfied with their lives and trapped in their respective worlds. This visually stunning but bleak comedy turns the lives of these two women around when a soldier at a border checkpoint officer confuses them. Weighty isues of life and death stand alongside plenty of Ikeaesque humour and when the lives of the two women blur into each other it is disturbing that nobody seems to notice. The viewer is left to question identity and politics.
Self-Made is the opening film of the 11th Israeli Film Festival which is screening at Cinema Paradiso 28 August to 7 September. Tickets and program information are available from the lunapalace website.
Lezly Herbert
