Skip to main content
Karaoke film image, director Moshe Rosenthal

Karaoke

This event has passed

Movie theatres usually discourage talking but our latest series is designed to encourage it — before and after (not during) the show. Aimed at film lovers 55+, Talking Pictures offers audience-friendly festival films, refreshments, and an open invitation to chat about our shared experience of the movie. Tickets are just $10. Bring a buddy and get two tickets for $16!

Talking Pictures happens the last Tuesday of the month, 11:00 am, at the most comfortable theatre in the city, the VIFF Centre.

Meir (Sasson Gabay) is slumping towards retirement and no longer has any fight in him. When the new guy in the penthouse suite double parks in front of Meir’s car, well, it just sums up the kind of day/week/life he’s having. But Itsik (Lior Ashkenazi) apologizes profusely and insists Meir and his wife Tova (Rita Shukrun) come up for a glass of wine. Turns out Itsik isn’t just rich and successful, he’s also charming and gregarious. Under the bright wattage of his attentive smile, Meir and Tova start to feel better about themselves and imagine a new chapter is possible.

Moshe Rosenthal’s comedy of vanities (the Audience Award winner at the Jerusalem Film Festival) has a deft, light touch, but hits harder than you might expect. That’s down to a sharp, keen script, and to the excellence of the performances—with special mention reserved for Gabay, who shows us a decent, downtrodden man willing to do almost anything (karaoke!) to recover his self-respect. That this is a grave error of judgment should go without saying.

Director

Moshe Rosenthal

Cast

Sasson Gabay, Lior Ashkenazi, Rita Shukrun, Arie Tcherner, Kobi Farag, Michal Levi

Credits
Country of Origin

Israel

Year

2022

Language

In Hebrew with English subtitles

Awards

Four Ophir (Israeli Academy) Awards including Best Actor, Best Actress; Audience Award, Jerusalem Film Festival

19+
103 min

Book Tickets

This event has passed.

Credits

Executive Producer

Yaron Bloch, Ben Giladi, Michal Vermus, Roni El-Roy, Dubi Rubinstein, Raz Yosef, Reuven Hecker

Producer

Efrat Cohen, Iris Ben-Moshe

Screenwriter

Moshe Rosenthal

Cinematography

Daniel Miller

Editor

Dafi Farbman

Production Design

Ido Dolev

Original Music

Gal Lev, Lior Perla

Also Playing

Frankenstein

Dir. Guillermo del Toro
149 min

Frankenstein and Guillermo del Toro might have been made for each other. The movie does not disappoint, a ripping yarn of grand adventure, spectacle, hubris, passion and XXL body parts, a tale of the fantastic that rings the imagination. Screening in 35mm.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

The Ballad of a Small Player

Dir. Edward Berger
105 min

Colin Farrell stars in this noir film about a gambler running out of luck in Macau, from the director of Conclave and All Quiet on the Western Front. Tilda Swinton, Fala Chen and Deannie Yip costar.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Woman in the Dunes

Dir. Hiroshi Teshigahara
147 min

Teshigahara's collaboration with novelist Kōbō Abe's is vividly strange, erotic and unsettling allegory about an amateur entymologist who is himself ensnared in a trap he only dimly understands. Screening in 35mm.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989

Dir. Göran Hugo Olsson
240 min

Drawing on 30 years of television archives, Göran Hugo Olsson relates the early history of the state of Israel, as reported by Swedish filmmakers, politicians and journalists. "An astonishing, invaluable document." William Mullally, The National

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre