Female Film Critics 24/375
Don’t be surprised if you find yourself having to confirm whether Israeli writer/director Orit Fouks Rotem’s Cinema Sabaya is a drama or a documentary. She takes such an authentic, cinema verite approach to her subjects — a disparate group of eight Jewish and Arab women who get to know each other while taking an introductory filmmaking class — that it’s easy to believe you’re watching real life unfold on screen.
Read more
Israel’s official submission to the 2022 Academy Awards, director Orit Fouks Rotem’s Cinema Sabaya, is a deceptive film. Shot like a documentary, the film combines professional and first-time actors, improvisation and scripted dialogue, professional shots and amateur video to tell the story of eight Jewish and Arab women who attend a workshop at a community center in Hadera, near Haifa, Israel, to learn how to use a video camera to document aspects of their daily lives. The film’s name also takes on a double meaning: “sabaya,” Arabic for “woman,” is used by the militant Islamic group ISIS to denote the Kurdish women they kidnap to serve as sex slaves. During the course of the film, the second meaning of the word will assert itself.
Read more
At the beginning of the documentary-like Israeli drama Cinema Sabaya, we learn that the word “sabaya” pronounced correctly in Arabic means a group of women but mispronounced it means “women prisoners of war.” It was a term ISIS used to describe the Yazidi women they held captive 2014 and can even imply “sex slave.” It is an interesting start to Orit Fouks Rotem’s slow-burn but ultimately powerful drama, one that touches on cross-cultural issues as well as on what shared aspects in women’s lives.
Read moreShira Geffen is an Israeli actress, screenwriter and film director. Her first feature Jellyfish (or Medzudot), which she co-directed with
Read more