ControversyNadav Lapid has rarely shied away from voicing his dissent towards the political situation in Israel, his latest feature ‘Ahed’s Knee’ being a case in point.Tnm StaffNadav Lapid at the closing ceremony of Iffi 2022Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid, who headed the jury panel at the 53rd International Film Festival of India (Iffi) in Goa, has left film enthusiasts and even political figures divided with his remarks on the controversial Vivek Agnihotri film The Kashmir Files. Speaking at the closing ceremony of Iffi 2022 on the night of Monday, November 28, Lapid had referred to the film as “vulgar” and a “propaganda movie”, adding that the jury was “disturbed and shocked” to see the film being screened at the prestigious film festival. The 47-year-old filmmaker’s comments went on to garner appreciation and ire, rekindling the debate surrounding The Kashmir Files, which has been accused by many of weaving a skewed...
- 11/29/2022
- by LakshmiP
- The News Minute
There could not have been a better candidate than the Israeli director and screenwriter, Nadav Lapid, for the honour of being made chairman of the International Film Festival of India (Iffi) jury.
Lapid has won top awards at the Berlin and Locarno film festivals, and the French honour Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. He is also no stranger to Iffi. His 2014 film ‘The Kindergarten Teacher’ was screened at the Festival and Sarit Larry, its lead star, was awarded Best Actor (Female).
Coincidentally, Season 4 of the popular Netflix action drama series, ‘Fauda’, was premiered at the just-concluded 53rd Iffi and one its leading stars, Lior Raz, and its writer, producer and creator, Avi Isaacharoff, walked the red carpet with Union I&b Minister Anurag Thakur.
What the Iffi organisers did not bargain for, though, was that Lapid is not known to pull back his punches on issues that are politically controversial.
Lapid has won top awards at the Berlin and Locarno film festivals, and the French honour Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. He is also no stranger to Iffi. His 2014 film ‘The Kindergarten Teacher’ was screened at the Festival and Sarit Larry, its lead star, was awarded Best Actor (Female).
Coincidentally, Season 4 of the popular Netflix action drama series, ‘Fauda’, was premiered at the just-concluded 53rd Iffi and one its leading stars, Lior Raz, and its writer, producer and creator, Avi Isaacharoff, walked the red carpet with Union I&b Minister Anurag Thakur.
What the Iffi organisers did not bargain for, though, was that Lapid is not known to pull back his punches on issues that are politically controversial.
- 11/29/2022
- by Glamsham Bureau
- GlamSham
Ahed's Knee (2021)In Nadav Lapid’s latest feature, Ahed’s Knee (2021), an Israeli director named Y (Avshalom Pollak) finds himself in the Arava Valley, an arid region south of the Dead Sea. He is there to present one of his films at the invitation of Yahalom (Nur Fibak), a longtime admirer of his work and the Ministry of Culture’s Deputy Director of the Division of Public Libraries. The two go for a walk during the screening; Yahalom later steps away to fetch an official Ministry form that Y has to fill out, wherein he is to specify the topic of the film and the post-screening Q&a. When she returns, he will surreptitiously record her making incriminating statements about not just the form, but the Ministry as a whole. For the moment, however, he pauses to take in the sunset and call his mother, leaving her a voicemail about the...
- 3/16/2022
- MUBI
Released at the end of July in a limited theatrical run via Kino Lorber, a bit over a year after premiering out of competition in the 2014 Cannes Critics’ Week, Israeli director Nadav Lapid’s evasive The Kindergarten Teacher managed to net a little under forty thousand dollars after playing four venues. Less topically divisive than Lapid’s 2011 debut, Policeman (which took over two years to see a theatrical release in the Us), his sophomore narrative’s curious, and increasingly disturbing narrative, has helped secure his reputation as one of the most notable Israeli auteurs in recent memory.
Lapid once again conveys a knack for presenting us with unsettling behavior, this time around with such gradual displacement we feel uncomfortably complicit in our close observation of what plays out like a tranquil psychotic break. Intimate and at times quite pointedly critical as concerns the lavish worship and inaccurate interpretation of artistic intention,...
Lapid once again conveys a knack for presenting us with unsettling behavior, this time around with such gradual displacement we feel uncomfortably complicit in our close observation of what plays out like a tranquil psychotic break. Intimate and at times quite pointedly critical as concerns the lavish worship and inaccurate interpretation of artistic intention,...
- 12/8/2015
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Now this makes for an interesting double feature. Recently I looked at the Sliff feature entry from France, Once In A Lifetime, a high school drama. Now, here’s another education-inspired film. But it’s much younger, as you can assume from the title The Kindergarten Teacher. And it’s a whole lot…stranger. That’s the word for this character study from Israel. A great deal of scrutiny is place on the preschool levels, since those young minds are still developing along with their social skills. This tale is about a woman in charge of guiding these little ones as she realizes that one of her charges is quite uniquely gifted.
Nira (Sarit Larry) is the title character, devoted wife and mother (her son’s now in the Army), and teacher to a dozen or so kiddos. But one has a unusual talent. Little Yoav (Avi Shnaidman), without warning,...
Nira (Sarit Larry) is the title character, devoted wife and mother (her son’s now in the Army), and teacher to a dozen or so kiddos. But one has a unusual talent. Little Yoav (Avi Shnaidman), without warning,...
- 11/11/2015
- by Jim Batts
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Following his Jury Prize at Locarno 2011 for Policeman, Israeli director Nadav Lapid returns with The Kindergarten Teacher, a quiet story about talent, exploitation, and responsibility. Kindergarten teacher Nira (Sarit Larry) can’t quite rise over her own mediocre abilities as a poet, but when she takes five-year-old Yoav’s (Avi Shnaidman) inspired poetry as her own, her fellow poets react with jealousy and awe. Nira feels as if society at large will not support Yoav’s prodigy, so she takes it upon herself to squeeze more poems out of him—no matter the cost.Lapid and director of photography Shai Goldman shoot the film with equal amounts of distance and intimacy, landing on a distinct look that empathizes with teacher and student, but never spells out what they may be thinking. Nira’s obsessive behavior remains a spiritual pull to the boy’s Dionysian words. Yoav’s interiority may be probed through close-ups,...
- 8/15/2015
- by Zach Lewis
- MUBI
The Kindergarten Teacher could easily have been a comedy – a broad satire, maybe – but Israeli director Nadav Lapid has chosen to make it a surreal drama. It’s a brave decision, given the set-up: Nira (Sarit Larry), an aspiring poet and kindergarten teacher, discovers that one of her students, a five-year old named Yoav (Avi Shnaidman), enters weird trances and creates beautiful poetry on the spot. Convinced that she’s discovered a prodigy, Nira tries to find a way to promote Yoav’s talent – appealing to his restaurateur father, his journalist uncle, and others – but at every turn is met by a world consumed with the vulgar and mundane. Nira recalls the young Mozart, writing symphonies and concertos while being fostered by kings. But Yoav, she says, “is a poet in an era that hates poetry.”That’s a loaded concept, and it would be easy to see in The...
- 8/2/2015
- by Bilge Ebiri
- Vulture
Dangerous Minds: Lapid’s Sophomore Film a Bizarre, Engrossing Character Study
Repressed desires find an unexpected outlet in Israeli director Nadav Lapid’s sophomore film, The Kindergarten Teacher, a sometimes mystifying character study. The director’s 2011 debut, Policeman, was a topical glance at social unrest in Israel and took three years before it saw a theatrical release in the Us, nearly a month after his second title saw a premiere outside of competition in the 2014 Cannes Critics’ Week. Lapid once again conveys a knack for presenting us with unsettling behavior, this time around with such gradual displacement we feel uncomfortably complicit in our close observation of what plays out like a tranquil psychotic break. Intimate and at times quite pointedly critical as concerns the lavish worship and inaccurate interpretation of artistic intention, Lapid continues to assert an idiosyncratic perspective as offbeat as it is potentially off-putting.
Nira (Sarit Larry...
Repressed desires find an unexpected outlet in Israeli director Nadav Lapid’s sophomore film, The Kindergarten Teacher, a sometimes mystifying character study. The director’s 2011 debut, Policeman, was a topical glance at social unrest in Israel and took three years before it saw a theatrical release in the Us, nearly a month after his second title saw a premiere outside of competition in the 2014 Cannes Critics’ Week. Lapid once again conveys a knack for presenting us with unsettling behavior, this time around with such gradual displacement we feel uncomfortably complicit in our close observation of what plays out like a tranquil psychotic break. Intimate and at times quite pointedly critical as concerns the lavish worship and inaccurate interpretation of artistic intention, Lapid continues to assert an idiosyncratic perspective as offbeat as it is potentially off-putting.
Nira (Sarit Larry...
- 7/31/2015
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
The verse may be reminiscent of Monty Python, but this Israeli film about a woman trying to rescue a poetry-spouting child from the world’s corrupting influence is still fascinating and perplexing
Rare is the movie where you are rooting for someone to kidnap a five-year-old child. Yet The Kindergarten Teacher, Nadav Lapid’s follow-up to his extraordinary film Policeman, slowly lays down bricks for this strangely logical path.
Nira (Sarit Larry) is a kindergarten teacher and empty-nest mother with an intellectual/artistic itch. One day she notices something curious about one of her young pupils. Yoav (Avi Schnaidman), a boy with ragamuffin’s hair but a somewhat weary, pained look on his face, will sometimes begin pacing back and forth. “I have a poem,” he’ll announce, and then burst with non-rhyming verse of a vocabulary and syntax well beyond his years.
Continue reading...
Rare is the movie where you are rooting for someone to kidnap a five-year-old child. Yet The Kindergarten Teacher, Nadav Lapid’s follow-up to his extraordinary film Policeman, slowly lays down bricks for this strangely logical path.
Nira (Sarit Larry) is a kindergarten teacher and empty-nest mother with an intellectual/artistic itch. One day she notices something curious about one of her young pupils. Yoav (Avi Schnaidman), a boy with ragamuffin’s hair but a somewhat weary, pained look on his face, will sometimes begin pacing back and forth. “I have a poem,” he’ll announce, and then burst with non-rhyming verse of a vocabulary and syntax well beyond his years.
Continue reading...
- 7/29/2015
- by Jordan Hoffman
- The Guardian - Film News
Projects new to Screenbase include Ricky Gervais’ satire Special Correspondents, Garth Davis’s survival tale Lion, and Nadav Lapid’s The Kindergarten Teacher.Garth Davis’ Lion
Adapted from the true story “A Long Way Home,” Rooney Mara (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) joins Nicole Kidman (Moulin Rouge!) and Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire) in the cast, which also includes India’s best actors Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Priyanka Bose, and Deepti Naval.
Garth Davis will direct while Emile Sherman, Iain Canning, and Angie Fielder will produce for See-Saw Films in association with Sunstar Entertainment and Aquarius Films.
The film is co-financed by Screen Australia and will be distributed worldwide by The Weinstein Company, excluding New Zealand and Australia, which Transmission Films will cover.
Ricky Gervais’ Special Correspondents
Netflix has acquired world rights to the comedy, which has plans for a 2016 launch.
Produced by Chris Cohen, Aaron L. Gilbert, and Manuel Munz for Bron Studios and Unanimous Pictures, the comedy...
Adapted from the true story “A Long Way Home,” Rooney Mara (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) joins Nicole Kidman (Moulin Rouge!) and Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire) in the cast, which also includes India’s best actors Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Priyanka Bose, and Deepti Naval.
Garth Davis will direct while Emile Sherman, Iain Canning, and Angie Fielder will produce for See-Saw Films in association with Sunstar Entertainment and Aquarius Films.
The film is co-financed by Screen Australia and will be distributed worldwide by The Weinstein Company, excluding New Zealand and Australia, which Transmission Films will cover.
Ricky Gervais’ Special Correspondents
Netflix has acquired world rights to the comedy, which has plans for a 2016 launch.
Produced by Chris Cohen, Aaron L. Gilbert, and Manuel Munz for Bron Studios and Unanimous Pictures, the comedy...
- 4/13/2015
- by mam27@bu.edu (Monica Mendoza)
- ScreenDaily
His allegorical, dense and at times discomforting sophomore film received a Special Screening slot during Cannes Film Fest’s 2014 Critics’ Week (see our video coverage below), and to my surprise was bypassed during film festival season with no-shows at Tiff and Nyff. He might only be two features in, but Nadav Lapid is batting 1000 and the Kino Lorber folks agree. IndieWIRE reports that The Kindergarten Teacher has been picked up and has been set up with a July 31st date at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York City, before a national expansion in August and September.
Gist: A teacher discovers in a five year-old child a prodigious gift for poetry. Amazed and inspired by this young boy, she decides to protect his talent in spite of everyone.
Worth Noting: Lapid studied cinema at the Sam Spiegel school in Jerusalem and saw his first film receive early support...
Gist: A teacher discovers in a five year-old child a prodigious gift for poetry. Amazed and inspired by this young boy, she decides to protect his talent in spite of everyone.
Worth Noting: Lapid studied cinema at the Sam Spiegel school in Jerusalem and saw his first film receive early support...
- 4/9/2015
- by Eric Lavallee
- IONCINEMA.com
The Museum Of Modern Art and the Film Society Of Lincoln Center announced the first nine films in the long-lived showcase for new work. They include Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy’s winner of the Critics’ Week grand prize at Cannes, which is set in a Ukrainian school for deaf and mute coeds and is told entirely in sign language, with no subtitles. The Tribe is one of four films that will make their way to Manhattan from Park City, Utah, where they’re also on the Sundance roster: Charles Poekel’s Christmas, Again, about a heartbroken Christmas-tree salesman; Rick Alverson’s Entertainment, a follow-up to The Comedy, about a broken-down comedian doing stand-up across the Mojave Desert and Kornél Mundruczó’s White God, winner of the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes about a dog’s journey back to its owner after being abandoned in the city.
Representing 11 countries from around the world,...
Representing 11 countries from around the world,...
- 1/21/2015
- by The Deadline Team
- Deadline
The Vice Chairman of Entertainment Society of Goa Damodar Naik and Actress Divya Dutta presenting the Special Jury award to Shrihari Sathe Director of the Indian film ‘Ek Hazarachi Note’, at the closing ceremony of the 45th International Film Festival of India (Iffi-2014), in Panaji, Goa on November 30, 2014. Photo: Photo Division
Russian film Leviathan won the Golden Peacock for Best Film at the 45th International Film Festival of India (Iffi). The Governor of Goa Mridula Sinha and veteran actor Waheeda Rehman jointly presented the award to the director Andrey Zvyagintsev at the closing ceremony in Goa.
Marathi film Ek Hazarachi Note directed by Srihari Sathe won the Centenary Award besides receiving the Special Jury Award. The Centenary Award, comprising a Silver Peacock, Certificate and a cash prize of Rs. 1 million (Usd 16000), was instituted in 2012 for a feature film that “reflects a new paradigm in motion pictures in terms of aesthetics,...
Russian film Leviathan won the Golden Peacock for Best Film at the 45th International Film Festival of India (Iffi). The Governor of Goa Mridula Sinha and veteran actor Waheeda Rehman jointly presented the award to the director Andrey Zvyagintsev at the closing ceremony in Goa.
Marathi film Ek Hazarachi Note directed by Srihari Sathe won the Centenary Award besides receiving the Special Jury Award. The Centenary Award, comprising a Silver Peacock, Certificate and a cash prize of Rs. 1 million (Usd 16000), was instituted in 2012 for a feature film that “reflects a new paradigm in motion pictures in terms of aesthetics,...
- 11/30/2014
- by NewsDesk
- DearCinema.com
Israeli director Nadav Lapid takes an unusual premise and then rolls with it in "The Kindergarten Teacher," a second, more feminine film after the successful macho posturing of his striking debut, "Policeman." Indeed, the titular protagonist is a teacher here and as such something of a substitute mother for all her charges, though Nira (Sarit Larry) starts to take a special interest in the diffident and shy-seeming little Yoav (Avi Schnaidman) when she hears him recite a poem while determinedly walking back and forth in the yard of the child care facility where she works. Yoav's nanny, the aspiring actress Miri (played by singer-turned-actress Ester Rada), explains that the poem the five-year-old recites is actually his own and that she has the casual habit of using them during her own auditions, complete with fancy scarf play that plays up the drama of the poetry. It just so happens that Nira...
- 5/26/2014
- by Boyd van Hoeij
- Indiewire
As confusingy placed in Cannes as Ruben Östlund's Force Majeure is the “Special Screening” of Israeli director Nadav Lapid's The Kindergarten Teacher, his followup to 2011's Jury Prize winner at Locarno, Policeman. Confusing because here too is a strange and provocative film made with refreshing clarity, and yet it languishes aside of an aside of the Festival de Cannes. Regardless, on to the film.
It takes a Sundance/Euro-festival premise and applies what could only be described as sensible direction to it. A kindergarten teacher who is an amateur poet discovers that a 5-year old boy in her class is extemporaneously inspired to utter absolutely beautiful, completely adult poetry. In wonder, she tries to foster his talent in the face of, as she describes it, a world that has no use for poetry. She tries out his poems in an amateur poetry workshop as her own, and attempts...
It takes a Sundance/Euro-festival premise and applies what could only be described as sensible direction to it. A kindergarten teacher who is an amateur poet discovers that a 5-year old boy in her class is extemporaneously inspired to utter absolutely beautiful, completely adult poetry. In wonder, she tries to foster his talent in the face of, as she describes it, a world that has no use for poetry. She tries out his poems in an amateur poetry workshop as her own, and attempts...
- 5/22/2014
- by Daniel Kasman
- MUBI
Exclusive: Le Pacte has taken on world rights to Nadav Lapid’s The Kindergarten Teacher.
Sarit Larry and Avi Schnaidman co-star in the story of a poetry-loving kindergarten teacher who tries to nurture a pensive young budding poet.
Israel’s Pie Films produces with France’s Haut Et Court and Arte co-producing. The Rabinovich Film Fund supports the production, which was developed at the Jerusalem Film Lab.
Haut et Court will release in France in 2014.
Lapid previously directed festival hit The Policeman.
Sarit Larry and Avi Schnaidman co-star in the story of a poetry-loving kindergarten teacher who tries to nurture a pensive young budding poet.
Israel’s Pie Films produces with France’s Haut Et Court and Arte co-producing. The Rabinovich Film Fund supports the production, which was developed at the Jerusalem Film Lab.
Haut et Court will release in France in 2014.
Lapid previously directed festival hit The Policeman.
- 9/6/2013
- by wendy.mitchell@screendaily.com (Wendy Mitchell)
- ScreenDaily
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.