Silent

After a brief prologue, the movie tosses a great deal of background at us. A good half-dozen important characters, each with a back story (not promptly nor even entirely revealed), plus an imaginary political configuration. Israel is retrying the experiment of electing its prime minister directly, and the leading candidate is riding on a media trend of playing on the public's emotions. (That last part is familiar.)

The male lead, played by Morris Cohen, finds himself under a Pinteresque assault by a team of manipulators whose motives aren't quite clear. At the same time, he is trying to snap his mother out of a spell of silence. Maybe she's been traumatized by something. Everyone in the movie seems to have been, but they soldier on without knowing what awaits. Explanatory clues are dropped often enough to keep the audience-- or at least a large part of the audience-- paying attention.

Cohen, Levana Finkelstein the female lead, and supporting actress Esti Zakheim all won nominations for the Ophir (the "Israeli Oscar"). Another supporting actress is Liat Harlev, whose azure grey eyes normally distract from everything else. I get the impression that maybe in this film she was wearing dark contacts.

Not all viewers will be satisfied with how things work out in the end, but apparently the ending has more to do with capping the arc of the characters than with keeping the surrounding political story believable.