There is little suspense about tracking down Oren's and Michal's respective parents, as they have files from their adoption with names and addresses, and they hire a local journalist who helps them connect. So, halfway through the film, the whole family goes to Guatemala. In his need to understand himself, Oren gets the urge to meet his biological parents. Extended segments with the siblings as young children really hammer home this impression. But their patience and love are unconditional and endless, meaning that Oren and Michal have a stronger support system than most kids. The most poignant level of the film is built through old home videos shot by Ehud, which are used as a background for the parents' recollections and testimonies about the hero's childhood and the difficulties of raising him. His filming is instinctive: he shoots details that catch his eye, like a dog or a cat running in the street, or a shy girl at a green-market stand, but he also has a penchant for strong images, such as a dead bird on the asphalt or a ripped-up teddy bear sitting alone on a parapet. So in addition to footage filmed by Heymann's camera operators, led by DoP Itai Raziel, we get to see the way Oren perceives the world. Oren hates his boarding school for children with intellectual disabilities, but has discovered an outlet that he says magically takes him away from the challenges of the institution: a camera. He is impatient, impulsive and prone to outbursts, which often ramps up the tension at home. Knowing that this disorder manifests itself through social and communication difficulties, a viewer can certainly recognise this in the young man's behaviour when he’s around his parents. Until they eventually settled on Asperger syndrome, which can serve as a pointer but by no means tells the whole story. When, early on, Oren's parents realised he had developmental problems, they took him to a slew of doctors who, one after the other, misdiagnosed him – with cerebral epilepsy, dyslexia, psychosis, bulimia. His younger sister, Michal, was also adopted from the Latin American country. The main protagonist is 19-year-old Oren Levy, a boy born in Guatemala and adopted when he was just four months old by Israeli parents, Dvora and Ehud.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |