The Panorama programme at the Berlinale is worth a visit. It is another place (besides the Forum section) where you might make your personal discovery of a new director or a film. Furthermore, in the Panorama section is where the “auteur films” (nice and pretentious as it sounds) have their world or European premiere, usually followed by a Q&A session with the team of the film.
That was the case with my 3rd film from the Berlinale: “Youth” – a feature film debut of the director Tom Shoval, born in 1981 in Israel.
Tom Shoval takes us to his hometown Petach Tikva, a satellite city of Tel Aviv and tells us the story of two teenage brothers Yaki and Shaul who, in order to save their family from bankruptcy, kidnap a beautiful girl from a rich family and demand a huge ransom for her release. Yaki has just enlisted in the army to do his military service and has a brand new rifle to carry around with him. He is the pride of the family.
“Youth” is a film about violence, disconnection from reality, desperation, depression and also a film that tells us about the middle class who have turned out to be the “new poor” in the current times of economic hardship.
Although the whole film gave me a feeling of uneasiness, I do not see this as a necessary bad thing. I guess it is just my personal problem with films about violence. I just avoid them. Luckily, there was more to “Youth” than only violence.
To quote the director: “This is a story that could happen anywhere in the world. We all face financial problems at some point in our lives, and we all come to the realization that our parents cannot always be a source of security and comfort to us. (…) The difference is that this story happens in Israel.” And in Israel it is a common thing to see teenagers to carry their M-16 rifles even when they play soccer. The question is what happens when they decide to use them and how often they tend to do so in times of moral and economic crisis. A disturbing question, indeed.
