Asaf Korman
Next to Her
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Feature film

Drama

90 minutes

Hebrew

Israel

Synopsis

Chelli is raising her mentally disabled sister Gabby all by herself. When the social worker finds out that she leaves her sister alone in the house while at work, Chelli is forced to place her in a day-care center. The void left by her absence makes room for Zohar in Chelli's life.This new romance creates another crack in the sisters' symbiotic relationship.

 

Director's Notes:

About three years ago I took a short break from my work as an editor and moved to a small room in Kibbutz Ha'Zore'a with the intention of writing my first feature film. Back then, Liron, was only my girlfriend and later became my wife and the mother of my son, was taking part in a short acting workshop. She had a homework assignment to find a scene from a known movie that touches her in a personal place, a scene that reveals something she is hiding. Her search for such a scene was exhausting and hopeless. She quickly realized that that movie (her movie) hadn't been made yet, and she compromised on a scene from a French film which was nice but didn't really touch the complex matter that defines Liron and drives her in life. While I was collapsing under my colossal expectations, Liron was in Tel Aviv trying to imagine the film that included her special scene. She quickly came up with the whole film, from beginning to end. She told me about it two weeks later she came to visit me. I put my other ideas aside.... this was going to be my first feature film.

We worked on the synopsis for a week,  I was playing the role of the reader, editor and mentor, and Liron was challenging herself for the first time as a screenwriter, driven by the same curiosity and freshness that I was driven by in my first year at film school. That combination of her and me, as a couple and as an actress and her director, pushed the writing forward and defined the essence of this film to me. It is primarily an actors' film, a film about people, about human beings. My inspirations to begin with have always been directors that deal with human beings, people, and only second to that is the framing. That was my main problem until Liron arrived. I write images, concepts; while Liron writes situations, drama. Secondly, this film is an act of love, in the most complex and challenging sense. It is an act of cooperation that encloses passion and pleasure, side by side with struggle and distress. It is an act of observation, of looking deep into each other's eyes, which requires true exposure, without compromise. In that sense, this film just has to be made, and more so in light of my short film, which also touched the edge of exposure, the borderline between fiction and life.

Asaf Korman.

Cast

Chelli LIRON BEN-SHLUSH

Gabby DANA IVGY

Zohar YAACOV DANIEL

Sveta SOPHIE OSTROVSKY

Jenny CARMIT MESSILATI

Shosh VARDA BEN-HUR

Shifra LIAT GOREN

Crew

Director ASAF KORMAN

Screenplay LIRON BEN-SHLUSH

Script Development SARI EZOUZ BERGER

Producers HAIM MECKLBERG ESTEE YACOV-MECKLBERG

Executive Producers MOSHE EDERY LEON EDERY YIGAL MOGRABI

DOP AMIT YASUR

Production Designer RON ZIKNO

Sound Engineer MOTTI HEFETZ

Editor ASAF KORMAN

With the support of

THE RABINOVICH FUND - CINEMA PROJECT

THE MINISTRY OF ECONOMY - DIGITAL MEDIA SUPPORT PROGRAM (Haifa Region Pilot Program)

Winner of The Israeli Film Critics Association Award for Best Direction in 2015 to Asaf Korman

Winner of The Israeli Film Critics Association Award for Best Screenplay in 2015 to Liron Ben-Shlush

Winner of The Israeli Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress in 2015 to Dana Ivgy

CANNES 2014

Quinzaine des Réalisateurs - nomination for Camera d'Or

Haifa International Film Festival 2015

Winner of The Israeli Film Critics Association Award for Best Israeli Film

Winner of The Israeli Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress in an Israeli Film to Dana Ivgy

Mumbai International Film Festival 2014

Winner of Best Actress Award to Liron Ben Shlush

Chicago International Film Festival 2014

Winner of Silver Hugo at the New Directors Competition

Haifa International Film Festival 2014

Winner of Best Israeli Film Award

Winner of Best Screenplay Award

Winner of FEDEORA Award for Artistic Achievement

Israeli Academy of Film and Television

Winner of Best Female Supporting Role to Dana Ivgy

Eurasia IFF 2014

Winner of the Best Film Award

Thessaloniki IFF 2014

Winner of Silver Alexander Jury Award

Tokyo Filmax Student Guild Festival 2014

Winner of Best Film and Jury award

Thessaloniki 2013

Winner of 2013 Thessaloniki IFF Work-in-Progress competition

Trailer