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SOUVENIRS

By Shahar COHEN, Halil EFRAT

CINEPHIL - as SALES All rights, World

Documentary - Completed 2006

- Year of production
- 2006
- Genres
- Documentary
- Countries
- ISRAEL
- Languages
- HEBREW, ENGLISH
- Duration
- 75 mn
- Director(s)
- Shahar COHEN, Halil EFRAT
- Producer(s)
- Sharon SHAMIR (Sirocco Productions)
- Synopsis
- Shahar is an unemployed filmmaker. His father, Sleiman, a strict 82 year old Yemenite, suggests that Shahar should make a film about the Jewish Brigade in which he served during WWII. Shahar would not be so enthusiastic about this theme hadn’t he realized that he may find a lost brother or sister that his father left behind as a “Souvenir”. Apparently, Sleiman had two Dutch girlfriends during that time, which he believes he left pregnant. This quest to find the ‘Souvenirs” reveals a historical tale as well; the story of young, idealistic and courageous men, who left their homeland to take part in a war that changed the course of human history. Sleiman and Shahar set out together following the trail of the Jewish Brigade, beginning in Israel, through Italy, Germany and concluding in Holland with a surprising discovery. The film exposes, with humor and compassion, the complex father-son relationship while raising universal questions about the tension between myths of bravery and reality and between memory and historical truth.