Too on-the-nose to resonate past the end credits, this slickly produced film still deserves praise for being progressive-minded, as Tarek isn’t a hateful man but a product of his circumstances who is only trying to help his family. It’s frustrating to see such a humane movie suffer from oversimplification.
For My Father(Sof Shavua B'Tel Aviv)
✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Germany, Israel · 2008
1h 37m
Director Dror Zahavi
Starring Shredi Jabarin, Hili Yalon, Shlomo Vishinsky, Jony Arbid
Genre Drama, Romance
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A suicide bomber must depend on the kindness of strangers when his explosives won't detonate, giving him time to meet some of his would-be targets and find love in an unexpected place.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
The New York Times by Jeannette Catsoulis
Well-intentioned but philosophically timid, For My Father wants to meditate on the moral reshuffling that can accompany imminent death. But the director, Dror Zahavi, is ill served by a screenplay (by Ido Dror and Jonatan Dror) too attracted to coincidence and too repelled by the existential brink.
Miami Herald by Rene Rodriguez
The movie takes a completely apolitical look at the lives of its three main characters, focusing not on their differences but on how, in a way, they are trapped by their cultures.
Israeli helmer Dror Sahavi's well-meaning but simplistic terrorist melodrama, gingerly counterbalancing religious fanatics on either side of the Israeli-Palestinian divide, utilizes a lyrical "Romeo and Juliet"-type encounter between a reluctant suicide bomber and a Jewish escapee from Orthodox closed-mindedness to plead mutual tolerance.
The Israeli feature For My Father is a rarity indeed: A sweet, sentimental movie about a suicide bomber.
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