Watch out, spoilers!
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The film by Israeli director Jacob Goldwasser “Laces”, 2018, in truth, is not easy to watch, because the topic is quite heavy and serious, although it is not shot in a tragic way, but the tragedy there is obvious. The film begins and ends with a young man “with disabilities” in the cemetery. Gadi (Nevo Kamha) reads Kaddish over the grave with some difficulty, the first time he reads it over his mother’s grave. Soon, his father Reuven (Dovale Glickman) appears in the cemetery, whom Gadi initially just pushes away, which is understandable, because his father left them with his mother 36 years ago, unable to cope with the need to raise such a son. But due to circumstances, Reuven is forced to take Gadi to his place, because there are no places in the place where the social worker wants to put him. His father has a small garage where he works with his assistant to repair cars, where Gadi helps wash cars. Contact between them is not established immediately, but then they will reach out to each other, Reuven does not want to give him anywhere, and Gadi does not want to go even to the very good place that the social worker got for him. But then it turns out that Reuven, who has so far neglected his health, is seriously ill, he has CKD (chronic kidney failure), at first he is put on dialysis, but the condition does not improve, he needs a kidney transplant. When Gadi finds out about this, he lights up the desire to give him his kidney, the commission doubts that he understands what such a decision means for him, when, finally, the commission agrees to this, the transplant does not help, and at the end Gadi reads Kaddish on his father and goes to live in that very special settlement for people with disabilities.
The film is actually well shot, the actors are good, Glickman I remember from the series “Stiesel”, Kamhi I had seen in the film “Note”, with this difficult role he coped perfectly. It seems that the basis is a real story, which the director learned 12 years before the shooting, but did not dare to take up this topic, because it is very personal for him, he has a son who just lives in such a settlement, but persuaded him to make this film performer of the role of Gadi Nevo Kamha, whom he had already shot earlier in his series, Kamha in some film has already played a similar role, and the director highly appreciated him in that role. I liked the movie.