UK Jewish Film Festival 2009 presents Seven Minutes in Heaven (Sheva Dakot Be Gan Eden)

Dir. Omri Givon | Israel | 2008 | 94 mins | Hebrew with English subtitles

Caught up in a Jerusalem bus bombing,Galia (Raymonde Amsellem) is clinically dead for seven minutes while a paramedic fights to save her life; her boyfriend Oren (Nadav Nates) does not pull through. As Purim approaches and with it the first anniversary of the bombing, Galia’s physical and emotional scars are still raw. Yet her desire to piece together the events of that day spur her on, helped by the appearance of handsome stranger Boaz (Eldad Prives). Backed by Amsellem’s mesmerising performance as Galia,writer- director Omri Givon’s impressively assured feature debut is a striking meditation on grief and healing. The mundane realities of daily life in Israel contrast with vivid flashbacks and unexpected revelations as Givon blurs the boundaries of reality, memory and trauma.The bombing scenes are sensitively handled but shockingly visceral, and a graveyard of wrecked buses provides just one of the film’s many haunting images.