Mirroring Reality To Shed Light On Important Issues: Inbar Horesh On Her Short Film "Birth Right"
Director Inbar Horesh was born in Jerusalem. She studied filmmaking at Minshar Film Academy, where she has been teaching directing courses for the last four years. Her graduation film, The Visit (Cannes official selection - Cinefondation selection 2014), participated in over fifty International festivals, was nominated to the Ophir awards (The Israeli Oscars) and won awards in festivals around the world. Here latest film, Birth Right, was inspired by the Israeli organization Birthright, who encourage young Jewish people to immigrate there.
Natasha is excited to travel to Israel to participate in a trip encouraging young diaspora Jews to immigrate there. When she manages to catch the attention of Shlomi, a handsome combat soldier, things turn ugly.
This topical film has been selected for sixteen high profile international film festivals, including Carmel International Short Film Festival where it received a special mention. We had the pleasure of chatting with Inbar about her film, its origins, her visual influence, and much much more!
How did the concept for Birth Right originate?
I met Natasha — who later became the lead actress for the film quite by chance. She told me the story of her immigration to Israel. This story made me realize that the state of Israel is financing a huge initiative that encourages immigration of young people with some Jewish heritage, but many of them don’t consider themselves Jews. So it raises a question for me, why encourage the immigration of non-Jews and give them citizenship and not give citizenship to the non-Jews already living here.
What excited you most about telling this particular story?
I realized that the way to lure the participants to join the free journey to a faraway exotic country is by marketing the well-known Birthright celebration of sexuality. The journey is conducted like a school trip for young adults (free from their parents and away from home), and under the surface of the educational trip, the tour guides and Israeli escorts encourage the participants to “get laid.” If the result is a kosher Jewish wedding, all the better. I did not invent the amusing absurdity created by the gap in the encounter between the weighty Jewish content and the atmosphere of debauchery, and I was so excited to mirror it in the film.
How did you find your cast?
While casting for Birth Right, I was looking for non-actors, young adults who speak Russian as first language and live in Israel. I met so many fascinating people and heard so many fascinating stories during the casting process that eventually I wrote several parts in the script for specific actors I had met during casting and invited many of the nominees that didn’t get a main roll to take part in the shooting as extras. Eventually, we spent a week of shooting in the desert with a group of 20 young adults, non-actors from Russian speaking countries, some of whom didn’t speak any Hebrew or English and some were visiting in the desert for the first time. It was a beautiful, real, funny and fascinating experience.
How did you and cinematographer Ilya Marcus arrive on the film’s aesthetics?
Ilya and I spent hours of watching the references together and days of traveling to the locations in order to create a cinematic language that combines the absurd aesthetics and at the same time, a natural use of the real locations.
What drew you to the visual arts? How did you get into directing?
I was always very much in the arts as child but after I finished high school I became very involved in human rights activism. As the situation in Israel became very disheartening, I wanted to find a way to mirror my reality and shed light on important issues. So very naturally I was drawn to cinema.
What films or filmmakers have inspired you, your style, or your approach to telling a story?
Similarly to Eran Kolirin’s The Band’s Visit, the group trip situation, the uniform shirts and the sense of detachment is making the absurd present, while the characters are telling true and personal stories. Like in Elia Suleiman’s trilogy (Chronicle of a Disappearance, Divine Intervention, and The Time That Remains), the absurd tone is characterized by the ability for self-humor and a great love for all who dwell in this place.
What do you hope audiences take away from the film?
I want to raise questions on what is modern Jewish identity? And what about the ones of mixed descent, the descendants of Jews who are eligible for Israeli citizenship according to the Law of Return that is based on Nazi racial policy, but aren’t Jews in their eyes or the eyes of the state and Jewish law? And what about the millions of Israeli citizens and residents who aren’t Jews? The Palestinian, refugees, foreign workers? Are we really so different than other societies in the world? And perhaps the attempt to believe that we are so much more united than others only hurt our ability to contain the difference and diversity that characterize this immigrant society? I wonder what can happen on a political and social level if we embrace our difference and diversity and instead of objecting to it, perhaps we turn it into a value.
Do you have any future projects in the works that you can share with us?
I am working on the long version of Birth Right!
What do you think? We want to know. Share your thoughts and feelings in the comments section below, and as always, remember to viddy well!