With the famous Cannes International Film Festival wrapping up over the weekend, director Joseph Cedar was already on the flight back to Israel when he learned that he had won the award for “Best Screenplay” for his film, “Footnote.” The film centers around a father-son rivalry of the academic kind -- both are Talmudic scholars at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
When asked how he came about choosing this particular program to base “Footnote” on, director Joseph Cedar replied, “It is the smallest department in the university, but it is famous worldwide for its uncompromising methods, and its unforgiving attitude toward the notion of ‘mistake.’ Once I started hearing stories from within this department, about mythological rivalries between scholars, stubbornness on an epic scale, eccentric professors who live with an academic mission that is bigger than life itself, even if its topic is radically esoteric, I fell in love with them all, and they became the centre of this story.”
Called “Hearat Shulayim” in Hebrew, the film opens June 2nd in Israel, and will be distributed by Sony Pictures in the United States later this year.
Check out the trailer below:
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