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Israeli director to present film at Dharamshala festival

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Press Trust of India Singapore
Award-winning Israeli writer-director Talya Lavie will present her debut feature on women in the armed forces at the Dharamshala Film Festival to be held next month.

"Zero Motivation", which deals with women conscripted into the Israeli military with the men, is about women in a remote army camp, said Lavie, 37, after presenting the same movie at the week-long 23rd Israel Film Festival being held in Singapore on October 21.

The movie is about everyday drama in the private lives of the young women, using the mandatory military service as a platform to tell a universal coming of age story.
 

"It is about love and disappointment, dreams and fears, friendship and loneliness and discovering your true self," she said.

"I am very excited about taking my film to India, especially to Dharmshala," Levie told PTI.

The 100-minute feature film is in Hebrew with English subtitles and was sold out on all four screenings in Singapore.

The film has won several awards including the Best Narrative Feature in last year's Tribecca Film Festival in New York.

Levie has also won the Best Director and Best Screenplay awards for the film from the Israeli Film Academy.

Elaborating on the women cause, she said, "We want women empowerment. Women are 51 per cent of the global population and we want to change the discrimination."

She pointed out that women were still being discriminated even Israel, an advanced country and society, as well as the liberal Hollywood.

"As a filmmaker, it is very important to hear women voices; women telling their own stories and just not have the men telling women stories. I want to hear women stories told by more and more women," she said.

The Dharamshala Film Festival, to be held November 5-8, selected "Zero Motivation" based on its international screening success.

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First Published: Oct 23 2015 | 2:48 PM IST

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