Army comedy-drama ‘Zero Motivation’ leads blockbuster year for Israeli films
Army comedy-drama ‘Zero Motivation’ leads blockbuster
year for Israeli films
The local
movie industry may be small, but it’s enjoying a record-breaking year buoyed by
a string of hit comedies and unashamedly commercial stories.
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| Nelly Tagar (left and below) as Daffi and Dana Ivgi in the award-winning “Zero Motivation.” |
Two soldiers with emotional issues
and a commander with control issues (all female) may mark a milestone in the
history of Israeli cinema. They are the stars of “Zero Motivation,” the
successful movie by Talya Lavie and one of the reasons for the blockbuster year
Israeli movies have been enjoying in 2014.
It still
doesn’t pay to make movies in Israel, warns the local industry, and they still
need government support. Despite those caveats, locally made movies are more
popular than ever before.
“Zero
Motivation,” Lavie’s debut feature, is the biggest hit of the year. It’s
already sold 600,000 tickets (in a population of 8.9 million, including
Palestinians). And since it’s still showing, it could even break the box-office
record of 2010 comedy “This is Sodom.”
“We can
certainly smile. The movie ranks highest, even if we include the Hollywood
movies shown here this year,” says Yossi Uzrad, co-owner of July-August, the
production company behind “Zero Motivation.”
Box-office
receipts in Israel have been growing for years, but the increase has been
mainly confined to overseas (read, Hollywood) movies. One reason for the
increase is the spread of giant multiplexes and technological advances in the
film industry, which have been drawing filmgoers back.
Even though
the Israeli experience is relatively expensive – and let’s not even mention the
gouging on popcorn – the forecast for ticket sales this year is 15 million.
Maybe even 16 million. Unusually, about 10 percent of that will be from ticket
sales for Israeli movies. “That is extraordinary by any criteria,” says Danny
Kafri, director of the Cinema Industry Association. “We haven’t seen figures
like that for decades.”
Moshe Edry,
owner of United King Films and the Cinema City multiplex chain, thinks the
final figures will be even better. “We will reach 2 million tickets for Israeli
movies this year,” he predicts.
Their
increased popularity isn’t due to any surge in Israeli movie production. In
fact, 22 Israeli movies were produced in 2014 (a few more are expected by year-end),
while in 2013 there were 28 new Israeli movies. But they sold less than half
the tickets compared to this year.
The year
2010 was a benchmark in Israeli cinema. Although just 17 movies were produced
locally, 1.1 million tickets were sold for Israeli movies, mainly thanks to
“Sodom,” which garnered sales of 570,000 tickets and was the most popular
Israeli movie in 25 years. (The most popular Israeli movie of all time remains
Topol’s 1964 comedy “Sallah Shabati,” says Yoav Abramovich, deputy manager of
the Yehoshua Rabinovich Foundation for the Arts, one of the bodies that
mediates government money for Israeli movies.)
Two soldiers with emotional issues
and a commander with control issues (all female) may mark a milestone in the
history of Israeli cinema. They are the stars of “Zero Motivation,” the
successful movie by Talya Lavie and one of the reasons for the blockbuster year
Israeli movies have been enjoying in 2014.
It still
doesn’t pay to make movies in Israel, warns the local industry, and they still
need government support. Despite those caveats, locally made movies are more
popular than ever before.
“Zero
Motivation,” Lavie’s debut feature, is the biggest hit of the year. It’s
already sold 600,000 tickets (in a population of 8.9 million, including
Palestinians). And since it’s still showing, it could even break the box-office
record of 2010 comedy “This is Sodom.”
“We can
certainly smile. The movie ranks highest, even if we include the Hollywood
movies shown here this year,” says Yossi Uzrad, co-owner of July-August, the
production company behind “Zero Motivation.”
Box-office
receipts in Israel have been growing for years, but the increase has been
mainly confined to overseas (read, Hollywood) movies. One reason for the
increase is the spread of giant multiplexes and technological advances in the
film industry, which have been drawing filmgoers back.
Even though
the Israeli experience is relatively expensive – and let’s not even mention the
gouging on popcorn – the forecast for ticket sales this year is 15 million.
Maybe even 16 million. Unusually, about 10 percent of that will be from ticket
sales for Israeli movies. “That is extraordinary by any criteria,” says Danny
Kafri, director of the Cinema Industry Association. “We haven’t seen figures
like that for decades.”
Moshe Edry,
owner of United King Films and the Cinema City multiplex chain, thinks the
final figures will be even better. “We will reach 2 million tickets for Israeli
movies this year,” he predicts.
Their
increased popularity isn’t due to any surge in Israeli movie production. In
fact, 22 Israeli movies were produced in 2014 (a few more are expected by year-end),
while in 2013 there were 28 new Israeli movies. But they sold less than half
the tickets compared to this year.
The year
2010 was a benchmark in Israeli cinema. Although just 17 movies were produced
locally, 1.1 million tickets were sold for Israeli movies, mainly thanks to
“Sodom,” which garnered sales of 570,000 tickets and was the most popular
Israeli movie in 25 years. (The most popular Israeli movie of all time remains
Topol’s 1964 comedy “Sallah Shabati,” says Yoav Abramovich, deputy manager of
the Yehoshua Rabinovich Foundation for the Arts, one of the bodies that
mediates government money for Israeli movies.)
Better than Hollywood
Recent
developments have Israeli movie people scratching their heads – what are they
doing right? So far this year, seven Israeli movies have managed to sell more
than 100,000 tickets at the box office, the threshold for “success.” Aside from
“Zero Motivation,” the list includes comedy “Kicking Out Shoshana” and
children’s action pic “Galis” (more than 200,000 each); the Shlomo Bar-Aba
comedy “Hill Start” and Nissim Dayan’s drama “Farewell Baghdad” (between
150,000 to 200,000 each); and the acclaimed black comedy about assisted death,
“The Farewell Party” (100,000).
Israeli
movies did better than Hollywood movies this year, says Mark Rosenbaum, one of
Israel’s more prominent movie producers. In Hollywood, one in every seven to
eight movies is considered a success. “This year, one [Israeli film] in four is
a success,” says Rosenbaum. “That’s success by global criteria.”
And Israel
achieved this despite the economy being almost paralyzed during Operation
Protective Edge in the summer. (In fairness, 120,000 movie tickets were sold at
a discount price of 10 shekels (around $3), which jacked up demand.)
Art for
art’s sake? That’s so last year
“This was a
year in which the funds managed to pick better projects,” believes Rosenbaum.
But beyond that, he feels it was the year in which Israeli cinema achieved a
trusting relationship with the local audience.
“Following
the first movie, ‘Zero Motivation’ – which was so strong – a relationship was
created with the Israeli filmgoer, which helped boost other movies,” he says.
That said, he doesn’t anticipate sales this strong every year.
But it
wasn’t just coincidence. Israel’s producers and filmmakers have undergone a
change in perception. More and more filmmakers don’t just look at the artistic
element: they also keep an eye on the box office. They might choose to cast a
television star in a leading role, for instance.
Another
element, says Edry, is that there were more comedies this year. “They saved the
industry,” he says. “Israeli cinema had traditionally focused more on dramas.”
Two movies
that perhaps took commercialization to extremes are “Galis,” coproduced by the
Children’s TV Channel and Dori Media, and “Kicking Out Shoshana,” a popular
comedy about a soccer player in Jerusalem who gets into trouble with a mafia
boss and is forced to pretend to be gay. Both were planned to be box-office
hits, says Yair Raveh, movie critic and author of the blog Cinemascope (in
Hebrew). “I feel that’s legitimate. The movie industry can’t work only to
screen at festivals and wait for funding. Cinema is a commercial enterprise,
after all.”
In fact, the
Israeli movie industry has been growing nicely since 2000, when a law was
passed that, among other things, allocated 80 million shekels ($21.1 million) a
year to support Israeli movies – half of which is earmarked for fiction
features through the Rabinovich fund. The Jerusalem Foundation adds to that,
but non-documentary movies only get 50 million shekels a year in support.
On average,
an Israeli movie costs about 4 million shekels to make. Various foundations put
up about half of that. Commercial television channels are required by law to
invest in original content: they invest between 60,000 to 800,000 shekels. The
producers may personally invest, as may the Mifal Hapayis national lottery and
foreign funds.
“The movie
world is highly unpredictable,” says Abramovich. “We aspire for every movie to
succeed, critically and at the box office. Some do.”
Anyway, this
year’s terrific numbers mean that some industry elements even made returns on
their investment. “Zero Motivation” is believed to have brought in some 20
million shekels, which is divided between the cinemas, producers, artists and
investors.
Actually,
says Rosenbaum, any movie that sold more than 100,000 tickets locally can be
considered to have broken even.
But it takes
time until the artists and producers see any money. The production of an
Israeli movie involves a very long chain, and each link along it helps itself
to money. The biggest chunk – about 60% of the movie’s gross – goes to the
cinemas. The distribution company (which may well own cinemas as well) then
gets between 8% to 12%. After all that, there’s precious little to share
around, mourns David Lipkin, production manager at a movie foundation. “An
Israeli movie is very unlikely to make money, but it can return the
investment.”
Any remaining
money after the cinemas and distributors goes to advertising and events;
whatever’s left then gets shared by the producers (who typically funded 10% of
the budget) and the artists, and private investors, if there were any.
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