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PRODUCTION / FUNDING Switzerland / Israel / France

EXCLUSIVE: Yona Rozenkier is shooting Décompression

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- This second feature film by the director discovered via The Dive is produced by Swiss firm Adok Films, alongside Israel’s KM Productions and French outfit DW

EXCLUSIVE: Yona Rozenkier is shooting Décompression
On the set of Décompression

Since 10 October, Yona Rozenkier has been shooting Décompression, his second feature film after The Dive [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, which was discovered in Locarno’s Cineasti del Presente section in 2018, before being screened in Toronto. The Israeli director has selected his brother Yoël Rozenkier and Samuel Vilozni (Tehilim [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
) to play the lead roles in his latest opus.

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Written by the filmmaker himself, the story revolves around 35-year-old Ben who’s depressed and unemployed, and who turns up in his native kibbutz with a wife and child in tow to ask his old, diabetic father, Albert, with whom he has always had a tricky relationship, for help recovering the family apartment in Warsaw, which was taken from them during the Second World War. But Albert has other plans. During a moment of total drunkenness, he wagered that he could travel across the entire country, from the North, to Eilat in the South, in just one week, on a tractor... Thus, Ben and Albert set off on a slow journey where they get to know one another through a rural and unknown version of Israel...

"Décompression is dotted with key events which have left a mark on me", explains Yona Rozenkier. "The first is the trauma linking back to the war. I’ve suffered from post-traumatic stress ever since I carried out my military service. I’ve been trying to recover for years. My first feature film, The Dive, tackled the subject head-on. In Décompression, we’re dealing with the after-effects of the trauma of war on my parents’ generation, which is a little-explored subject in Israeli cinema, where we tend to focus more on youngsters. By way of Décompression, I want to face up to my greatest fear, which is to end up like Albert, an alcoholic suffering from post-traumatic stress, without a job or a home, or like Ben, trapped in a marriage and a life which weren’t of his choosing."

Produced by José Michel Buehler on behalf of Swiss firm Adok Films, by Kobi Mizrahi for Israel’s KM Productions and by Dominique Welinski on behalf of French outfit DW (who previously partnered with the director on The Dive), Décompression – which was previously selected for the Cannes Film Festival’s Cinéfondation Workshop - notably enjoys the support of Cineforom, the FOC and the Israel Film Fund. The four-week film shoot kicked off in northern Israel and will continue in the country’s southern desert before wrapping in Eilat. International sales are under negotiation.

For the record, DW unveiled Shlomi Elkabetz’s documentary Cahiers Noirs - Ronit (which Dulac Distribution will release in France next year) in a Special Screening in Cannes back in July.

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(Translated from French)

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