Jellyfish / Meduzot | Les Meduses
Israel/France, 79' , 2007

Directed by: Shira Geffen, Etgar Keret
Script: Shira Geffen
Producer: Amir Harel, Ayelet Kait, Yaël Fogiel, Laetitia Gonzales
Production company: Lama Productions Ltd./ Les Films Du Poisson
Cinematography: Antoine Heberle
Editing: Sasha Franklin, François Gédigier
Music: Christopher Bowen
Cast: Sarah Adler, Nikol Leidman, Gera Sandler, Noa Knoller, Ma-nenita De Latorre, Ilanit Ben Yaakov, Zharira Charifai

Format: 35 mm, color
Running time: 79'

Synopsis
Batya is a young woman who works for a company catering the wedding of a young couple, Keren and Michael. Joy is a middle-aged Filipino caregiver for the elderly who speaks no Hebrew. Galia, an actress, arranges for Joy to take care of her sickly mother, Malka. What ensues is a series of overlapping encounters, some of which take on shades of the surreal. The bride breaks her ankle, forcing the couple to cancel their Caribbean honeymoon and stay in a Tel Aviv hotel. Batya unexpectedly becomes a foster parent when a little girl walks out of the ocean with no parent in sight. Joy, unable to communicate with the irritated people she works for, despairs her separation from her own five-year-old son back in the Philippines. And Michael, the dreams of his honeymoon in shreds, unexpectedly meets an attractive middle-aged resident of the hotel. None of this description does justice to the distinctive and idiosyncratic tone and arc of Jellyfish. Its joys lie in its visual wit and the juxtaposition of the unexpected with the everyday.

Awards
Cannes Film Festival 2007
Golden Camera

Directors Biography
Shira Geffen is a children’s author, playwright, and one of Israel’s most accomplished theatre directors. Jellyfish (co-director, 07) is her first feature film.
Etgar Keret has written several books, screenplays and short stories that have received international acclaim and awards. He co-directed his first short film, Skin Deep, in 1996. Jellyfish (co-director, 07) is his first feature film.

Web pages
Lamafilms.com

Reviews
This is a magical film that surprises and unsettles in the most delicate of ways. Connections and relationships come into focus against a backdrop of memory and, perhaps, imagination. We are startled by disconnections, then excited by the mysteries gradually revealed. Jellyfish is a hybrid of the conventional and the mildly experimental, at once playful and deadly serious, and constantly unpredictable / Dimitri Eipides, Toronto International Film Festival

Location and screening schedule:
matinee: SC Cinema, Wednesday, October 24th at 9.00
premiere: SC Cinema, Wednesday, October 24th at 20.00
reprisal: Cinema Europe, Thursday, October 25th at 10.00