- Starring
- Avshalom Pollak, Nur Fibak, Oded Azulay
- Writer
- Nadav Lapid
- Director
- Nadav Lapid
- Rating
- n/a
- Running Time
- 109 minutes
- Release Date
- n/a
Overall Score
Rating Summary
This will be one of many reviews during this year’s AFI Fest, to keep up with our latest coverage, click here.
The best films not only entertain but they also make audiences think and feel things. That is often easier said than done as films don’t always find that balance. That being said, they don’t necessarily have to always do all those things in order to succeed. Diverse voices and perspectives help to shake things up and challenge audience beliefs and the status quo. Those these voices aren’t always accepted by society and the powers that be, they are still vital to preserve a functioning society. While Ahed’s Knee doesn’t all work, it is nonetheless a provocative film that challenges the system in ways that aren’t always easy to watch, doing so through the lens of a character study that works thanks to a powerful lead performance from Avshalom Pollak. An eccentric main characters along with fun moments of weirdness just never quite fit together with the film’s themes, making for a slight tonal mess.
Ahed’s Knee follows Y (Pollak), a renowned Israeli filmmaker travelling to a remote desert village to screen his latest film. Once there, he meets a woman named Yahalom (Fibak), a deputy minister of culture for whom he strikes a relationship with. Little did she know, the eccentric filmmaker had much different intentions for this relationship. Y was definitely not like everyone else but beyond the weirdness on the surface was a tortured soul with a troubled past that led him to where he was today. All that pent-up frustration from the anti-art government that left him beaten down and broken worked against him by holding him back.
The best part of Ahed’s Knee was the magnetic performance from Pollak as Y. He was so fun to watch despite his eccentricities not matching up with his deeper-seeded frustrations but the moment where he finally let it all out was still incredibly powerful to watch because it was easy to connect with where that emotion came from. Meanwhile, Fibak more than held her own as a character that one can’t help but empathize with due to her unfortunate circumstances.
At the end of the day, those looking for a decent entry into Israeli cinema won’t go wrong with Ahed’s Knee.
still courtesy of AFI
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The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.
