Haaretz Newspaper: "Batim", the only Israeli feature film at the Berlin Festival, is poetic and exceptional.

Translation from Hebrew.

Berlin Film Festival: "BATIM", the only Israeli feature film at the Berlin Festival, is poetic and exceptional.

"Batim" the debut feature film by director Veronica Nicole Tetelbaum, simultaneously echoes both the familiar and the foreign, making it a unique cultural document.

Shani Litman, Berlin - February 17, 2025

The screening of Batim, the debut feature film by director Veronica Nicole Tetelbaum, took place yesterday (Sunday) at the Delphi Cinema in Berlin. After the screening, the director Tetelbaum, Israeli producers Elad Gabish and Adi Navon, and the lead actresses Yael Eisenberg and Tali Sharon took to the stage, where they were warmly received by the audience.

This is the only Israeli feature film participating in this year's Berlin Festival, and it is being screened as part of the Forum program. Batim was entirely filmed in Safed, and it takes place over the course of a single day, during which Sasha, who was born as a girl to Russian immigrant parents and grew up in the city, returns to search for their childhood memories.

Sasha (Yael Eisenberg), who refers to themselves in the masculine form, but whose body is still entirely feminine and whose family addresses them in the feminine form, moves between the houses where their family lived, now having left the city.

They eventually arrive at a house in the old part of the city, where a silversmith named Anna (Tali Sharon) lives. She is the first to respond to Sasha's request to address them in the masculine form and is also able to accommodate their search for the painful past.

Batim, a co-production between Israel and Germany, is a poetic and exceptional film. Most of it is filmed in black and white (by Yaniv Linton), and it appears like a piece of jewelry, with particularly striking plays of light and shadow. It deals with childhood trauma and its impact on a changing gender identity, a point that was not easy to convey to an audience that doesn't speak Hebrew, as in German and English, there is no distinction between masculine and feminine speech in the first or second person.

The director did not hesitate to choose a clear artistic path, with carefully crafted imagery and a pace that allows for contemplation and thought. Nevertheless, the film also allows for deep emotional identification, especially with the main character. Tetelbaum interestingly and deceptively blends a dream-like quality, intensified by the fog that surrounds the frozen city, with a very harsh reality.

Although the film was made before the new reform by Culture Minister Miki Zohar, which will likely make the production of such films impossible in the foreseeable future (since their business forecast doesn’t promise 3 million viewers), in Israeli eyes, it simultaneously echoes the familiar and the foreign, making it an important and unique cultural document. The choice to film in Safed, a city usually associated with Israeli cinema dealing with mysticism rather than immigration and family ties, creates a new and original cinematic experience and reveals a less common facet of Israeli existence.

Culture | Cinema | Haaretz Newspaper

https://www.haaretz.co.il/gallery/cinema/2025-02-17/ty-article/.premium/00000195-1399-d1b4-a7fd-dffd7a890000?gift=efbd09bf1b6a45c4a574013bea2c0ce9&lts=1741635113548