Who Lives There?

Omer Ben-David, Vera Grinblat

Producer

Estee Mecklberg

Lab Edition

2024

Production

2-Team Productions

Country

Israel

SYNOPSIS

A dark dramedy about Aya, 15, an introverted cellist who escapes her home to a free of charge religious boarding school, where she only intends to spend one year, until she’ll be accepted to a music school. Aya encounters violence and strict rules, and in order to survive, she befriends Michelle, a charismatic destructive girl. As the two form a new home, an island of sanity, in the midst of the chaos, we enter through them to a world of women, with no good or bad, just survival.

DIRECTOR'S NOTE

Vera – when I came to the understanding that a home that harms me is not a home, I left to look for another one. In the boarding school I found it - but at what cost?

Omer - After hearing Vera's story of how she imagined crazy traumas in homes outside of the school, I related to the girls' humorous desire to normalize reality. Although we try to keep the world realistic, we wish to give the film a fun & formalistic stylized approach - Just as the girls themself try to portray their own reality.

ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS

○ Omer Ben-David is a writer-director, graduate of Columbia University. Omer’s 6 short films, along with commercial works, screened in Raindance, LA Shorts, Vancouver, earning him an honorable mention at Berlin Music Video Awards, and a Grand Prix at Cannes Lions.

○ Vera Grinblat is a production designer who worked on The Death of Cinema and My Father Too, which premiered in Cannes, and The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem on Netflix. She is a graduate of Beit Berl School of Film and the Bezalel Academy of Art.

PRODUCER

Estee Mecklberg

2-Team Productions is one of the leading Israeli film production companies focusing on crossover feature films – films with highly artistic content, and outstanding audience appeal. 2-Team’s films have participated in all major international film festivals, including Cannes, Berlin,Tribeca, Venice, Toronto, and Sundance, won numerous international and Israeli awards (including Sundance Grand Jury Prize, Venice Audience Award, Emmy Award and Israeli Academy Best Film Awards) and, at the same time, were successfully distributed in Israel and around the world.

PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE

○ 2-Team Productions, Tel-Aviv
○ +972 54 4592223
○ tomer@2-team.com

PRODUCTION BUDGET

○ Total budget: 935,000 USD

LANGUAGE

Hebrew

GENRE

Dark Drama-Comedy

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