A deadpan Israeli comedy about duelling father-son professors, Footnote was an unexpected hit at Cannes and a deserving winner of the Best Screenplay award. “An enjoyable, and quite literal, textbook thriller.” — indieWIRE
In Cedar’s dark comic fable, bookish eccentrics pit their egos against each other... an enjoyable, and quite literal, textbook thriller.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2011
Footnote 2011
Hearat shulayim
“Father-son movies are usually man-boy dramas, but this excellent Israeli film, written and directed by Joseph Cedar, shows that the threads of competition, envy, exasperation and love are no less complex when the parent and the child are both grown men. Eliezer Shkolnik (Shlomo Bar Aba) is a professor of Talmudic studies at the HebrewUniversity, toiling tirelessly and nearly anonymously for 30 years to unlock the secrets of the Jerusalem Bible. His son Uriel (Lior Ashkenazi) teaches in the same department but with much more success; to Eliezer’s brilliance and dedication he adds the gift of smooth schmoozing. When one of them is awarded the vaunted Israelprize, the other must summon restraint and ethics, all the while stewing at the injustice. Rigorously balanced in its sympathies, and with a piercing view of human behavior under stress, the film is a human comedy that spans and understands the generations. This subtle delight is no mere footnote to the competition slate; it is one of this Festival’s glories.” — Mary Corliss, Time
“A comedy set in the Israeli academic world, and within that, in the tiny and rarefied realm of Talmudic scholarship, might sound like the ultimate film-festival niche product… But Cedar’s film is a story about intense professional rivalry and father-son conflict, and you don’t have to be Jewish or work in a university to understand that.” — Andrew O’Hehir, Salon.com