Footnote

In his second Academy Award® nomination for Best Foreign Language Film (Beaufort, 2007, Footnote, 2011) and the 2011 Cannes Film Festival Best Screenplay award winner, director screenwriter Joseph Cedar focuses on the tense father-son relationship of two Talmudic scholars whose academic achievements are disparately recognized by the professional community. Their relationship is tested when one of them is informed to be the winner of the coveted Israel Prize, the most prestigious national award for Science and Research.

Suspended between an intellectual thriller and tragicomedy, this original theme centers around the ambivalent portrayal of the professors' perspectives and the question of what is more important than the truth. This compelling feature is riddled with intertwined plots and ironies arising from the father-son academic and personal rivalry, artfully portrayed by veteran comic Shlomo Bar-Aba as the father Eliezer Shkolnik, and Lior Ashkenazi, as the son Uriel Shkolnik.

While skillfully interjecting dark humor, Footnote excels in its stylistic details. Starting with a short bullet-point narration, the feature gradually draws-in the viewer and, with Amit Poznansky soundtrack, increases the palpable suspense.