Feature Films

"GENTILA"

1997,  83 minutes

Screenplay and Director: Agur Schif

Producer: Chaim Sharir

Actors: Alon Abutbul, Nir Levi, Avshalom Polack, Yivgenia Dodina

Thriller. Gadi is a small time criminal who gets a job from his parole officer, to decorate thirty gas stations in the three days before Independence Day. He is joined in his journey from Tel Aviv north in a truck full of flags, by his youngest brother Yitzhak'le and Haim Shoshanna, an escaped convict connected to Gadi from their past.

In one of the gas stations along the way they meet a woman nicknamed "Gentila's mother" after the baby she is carrying in her womb. Her lover had beaten her up and abandoned her. Gadi invites her to join them. The mysterious stranger has Yitzhak'le attracted to her by force of his innocence and virginity, Gadi in love with her, and Shoshanna doing battle with her and then raping her. The lover catches up with them in a desolate gas station in the Galilee, and Shoshanna "sells" her to him in exchange for a gun and a necklace. When the woman leaves them, the journey ends. Gadi turns Shoshana in to the police. When the crowds set out to celebrate Independence Day, Gadi and his brother return to Tel Aviv in an empty truck.

The film won the Best Film Award at the Haifa IFF.

Produced with the assistance of the Israeli Film Fund