June
18
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THE DAY AFTER I’M GONE
THE DAY AFTER I’M GONE
Director: Nimrod Eldar
Cast: Menashe Noy, Zohar Meidan, Sarit Vino-Elad, Alon Neuman, Claudia Dulitchi, Sharon Hacohen, Miri Aloni
Runtime: 98minutes
Synopsis: Yoram, a 50-year-old veterinarian living in Tel-Aviv is forced to re-examine his relationship with his adolescent daughter Roni, after she attempts suicide. He decides to take her on a journey to visit her late mother’s family, a process of self and mutual discovery in a primordial desert land enveloping the Dead Sea.
URL:https://youtu.be/FuGFqO0azMM
Israeli director Nimrod Eldar’s thoughtful feature debut, The Day After I’m Gone tackles depression, teenage mental illness and family communication breakdown in an insightful, unsensational way.
A middle-aged widower in Tel Aviv, Yoram (Menashe Noy) is a vet at a safari park in Tel Aviv. His job is to take care of the wildcats, perform operations on sick animals and make sure that people don’t get out of their cars when they encounter a herd of rhinos.
He will rush to theatre to operate on a leopard but sees less and less of his teenage daughter, Roni (Zohar Meidan), neglecting to talk to her or understand her feelings.
Yoram’s opinion is that when you start hating your kid you know they have reached adolescence. A colleague tells him that they have reached L’âge ingrate – the age of ingratitude.
Roni’s failed suicide attempt prompts her father to finally take an interest in her life — or at least to try to. There is a tense, dramatic incident when police officers arrive at the family apartment, having been informed by social media monitors that Roni has made suicidal posts online.
Yoram’s solution is a healing road trip to visit his late wife’s relatives, people that he doesn’t get on with – especially his reactionary, quick tempered gun-toting brother-in-law, Arie (Alon Neuman). The family visit is to a visually striking desert community around the Dead Sea, that has almost become a ghost town with a vast sinkhole.
A winner of the Cinelink award for Work In Progress at the Sarajevo Film Festival and a Sam Spiegel Alumni Award, Nimrod Eldar makes a highly impressive feature debut with this subtle drama about injured animals, injured people and an injured country, with stunning cinematography from Itay Marom.
Menasche Noy is superb as a passive-aggressive man who has retreated into himself as a protection against further hurt and Zohar Meidan’s convincing performance as Roni demonstrates utter sensitivity. Eldar makes this father-daughter drama into an emotionally rich and beautifully subtle example of storytelling.
Streaming on MUBI
Images courtesy of MUBI
