10th edition CIFF – 10-14 April 2024

The Burglar (2017 Feature Film)

Marisol Gómez Mouakad | Puerto Rico, Mexico | 2016 | color | DCP | 90 min | Spanish, English | e.s.

Yaeli lives with her mother in a village by the Dead Sea. One day, her mother disappears without any explanation. After a break-in at their apartment, Yaeli decides to turn burglar herself. Not for the money, but because she misses intimacy and this allows her to catch a glimpse of the lives of others.

Then the distress of a break-in in her apartment, which Yaeli shared with her mother, until her mother just disappeared, without a word. Then Yaeli’s desperate voicemail messages, which remain unanswered. Altogether, a highly effective reflection of the extremely disturbed condition of this teenager.
What follows could be seen as a crash course in growing up. Lihi Kornowski plays Yaeli as a young woman who has long fenced off her emotions – perhaps out of self-defense. After what has happened, she no longer feels bound by the usual rules. She is young, independent and a tad reckless, so there’s nothing to stop her from doing some housebreaking of her own in order to secretly sample other lives, to witness the things she is missing. She doesn’t just take money, but other, more personal things, such as a hearing aid, a lipstick that makes her a woman – she even appropriates other people’s dreams. She can become anyone. But who is she really?

Place: CINEMA 3

Date: 5 April 2017

Time: 20:45

Duration: 1:10

Place: CINEMA 4

Date: 7 April 2017

Time: 18:45

Duration: 1:12

Place: CINEMA 4

Date: 9 April 2017

Time: 10:45

Duration: 1:13

Year in
Festival

2017

Director

Hagar Ben Asher

Camera

Amit Yasour

Cast

Lihi Kornowski
Sendi Bar
Vladimir Fridman

Country

Israel
Germany
France

Editor

Nili Feller

Language

English
Hebrew

Length

97 min

Music

Francois-Eudes Chanfrault

Producer

Jonathan Doweck
Eitan Mansuri
Benny Drechsel
Karsten Stöter
Yaël Fogiel
Nathalie Vallet
Laëtitia Gonzalez

Production Company

Spiro Films
Rohfilm Productions
Les Films du Poisson

Sales

The Match Factory GmbH

Scenario

Hagar Ben Asher

Year of Production

2017

Actress and director Hagar BEN ASHER (1979, Israel) was educated at the Minshar School of Art in Tel Aviv. Her short graduation film Pathways, which she wrote, directed and played a role in, premiered in 2007 at the Cannes Film Festival. In 2011, her first feature film The Slut likewise had its premiere in Cannes. The Burglar, her second feature, had its world premiere at IFFR 2017.

 

Filmography

(selection) Mish’olim/Pathways (2007, short), The Slut (2011), The Burglar (2017)