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Director Boaz Yakin explores through dance the male and female aspects of his central characters, each played by both a man and a woman

Watch the first 60 seconds of this experimental feature from Israeli-American director Boaz Yakin – it’s a love story with plenty of sex and expressionist dancing – and you’ll get a taste of the bizarreness to come. A naked woman sits on a bed and explains to camera that she’s acting in the film. Her name is Bobbi Jene Smith and she’s a dancer and choreographer by trade, not an actor. But given the dancing required by the script, she says, the film-makers have hired dancers to do the acting. Oh, and she’s playing a man.

This is not the last time director Yakin takes a sledgehammer to the fourth wall, and his deeply personal film is deeply exasperating at times, a bit indulgent...

London-based Matchbox films has bagged the U.K., Ireland and Australasian rights to Boaz Yakin’s all-singing, all-dancing gender-fluid romance “Aviva,” from Tbilisi, Béziers and London-based producer/distributor Alief Film.

The film is scheduled for distribution in those territories from the first quarter 2021.

Closed on the eve of the AFM, the deal follows Alief’s earlier U.S. sale of the film to Outsider Pictures and Strand Releasing in April. Outsider released the dance drama virtually in the U.S. in June on fledgling Hollywood movie service Row8.

Strand has also announced a mid-December release date for the film’s distribution for electronic sell-through/transactional video on demand, DVD and BluRay.

Shot on location in Paris and New York, “Aviva” revolves around a pair of transatlantic lovers, Aviva and Eden, whose characters take on both male and female forms at different moments during the narrative.

Young Parisian Aviva is played...

Boaz Yakin ‘s romantic dance drama “Aviva” has been sold by Alief Film Company to several big territories.

An exploration of gender identity and self-expression through body language, “Aviva,” shot on location in Paris and New York and revolves around a pair of transatlantic lovers, Aviva and Eden. After a long courtship they meet in person and fall in love, settling into an intimate relationship that leads to marriage, but one, as many are, laced with conflicts. The two protaganists are played by four different actors expressing both masculine and feminine sides.

Alief Film Company has closed deals with Synapse Distribution for Latin America and Yes Dbs for Israel, following the film’s premiere in competition at the Haifa Film Festival.

The film also played virtually at SXSW, Fantaspoa, Choreoscope Spain and Mexico editions, where it won the top prize.

“Aviva” was released virtually on in June 12 in North America by Outsider Pictures,...

Everyone has feminine and masculine dualities living inside them, but few embrace such qualities like an old friend — much less dance, argue, or make love to them in the moonlight. While the contemporary dance scenes are undoubtedly the highlight of Boaz Yakin’s provocative new romantic drama “Aviva,” the filmmaker externalizes the concept of one’s inner other by casting his main characters with both a male and female actor. The central couple therefore becomes four people, all of whom engage physically, verbally, and romantically in different combinations.

It’s a fascinating concept, and one offering plenty to grapple with on its own. Unfortunately, If “Aviva” didn’t already have such stimulating choreography and music going for it, maybe the high-concept schtick would feel revelatory instead of indulgent and distracting. As such, there is too much going on in the two-hour film. That’s unfortunate, because some simple streamlining to...

The characters in Aviva, writer-director Boaz Yakin’s experimental self-chronicle-meets-Carnal Knowledge update, have a lot of sex. They copulate passionately in suburban teenage bedrooms and expensive downtown lofts, furtively in the backrooms of bars and against nightclub walls, in versions both vanilla and 50-gray-shaded, positions both missionary and magnificently gymnastic, in twos and, occasionally, threes. They are comfortable enough with their bodies to frequently lounge around in the altogether; in fact, most of the people who show up are casually, inexplicably nude at one point or another. They are in...

A dazzling and frank dance musical, Boaz Yakin’s Aviva is an ambitious picture free from the restraints of traditional narrative–an ode to young urban living as young lovers Eden and Aviva settle down and settle into familiar gender roles. The question of gender roles is a loaded one, in fact. We’re told that Eden (played by Tyler Phillips as a man and Bobbi Jene Smith as a female) was intended to be a woman, played by a man, in a role written by a man. Eden’s lover, the luminous Aviva, is portrayed in female form by Zina Zinchenko and sometimes in the male form by Or Schraiber. The rules of the game–the movie within the movie–are explained as each character is introduced to us posing nude, in either a domestic or professional space, by the film’s female narrator. Confused yet? Aviva is as confounding as it is explicit,...

There’s a lot going on in Aviva, an experimental new film that often defies easy description. At its core, this is a romantic drama about two lovers, but that’s very much just what’s on the surface. Through a very bold approach, both in terms of a structural decision, as well as a fearless display of nudity and sexuality, Aviva is a movie that some will find enthralling, while others will find pretentious. I’ll admit to occasionally being befuddled by the flick, but there’s an hypnotic quality to it all that quickly wins you over. Hitting this weekend, it’s being described as a mash up of Climax and Marriage Story, and while that’s not quite accurate, it’s a solid starting point. Mostly, it’s something wholly unique. The movie is hard to explain, so forgive me if I use some of the official synopsis to begin.

"Everything is always changing." Outsider Pics has unveiled a new trailer for the film Aviva, an intriguing romantic drama that was set to premiere at the SXSW Film Festival this year. The film will now get a limited virtual release in June, before expanding further throughout the summer. From SXSW: Aviva portrays the relationship between Eden and Aviva, and how the conflicts and difficulties in balancing the masculine / feminine balance within themselves extends outward and challenges their connection. Both characters are played by both a man and a woman each, and the film is narrated for the most part by Eden's female side. Starring (in the two lead roles) Bobbi Jene Smith, Zina Zinchenko, Tyler Phillips, & Or Schraiber. The film has "exultant" dance sequences choreographed by co-star Bobbi Jene Smith, capturing "a restless, frenzied and very fluid moment in time - right now - where the male-female dynamic is demystified...

Outsider Pictures, with Strand Releasing, has acquired all North American rights on “Aviva,” a resolute return to independent filmmaking by the director who lit a fire with his Sundance Grand Prix winning debut, “Fresh,” but is best known by many for the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced feel-good race relations drama “Remember the Titans.”

Scheduled to world premiere in the Visions section of the SXSW Festival this April, and channelling part autobiographical elements, as well as life-long but unexplored influences and years of pent-up frustration from not doing the movies he really wanted to make – Yakin has told Indiewire’s Eric Kohn – “Aviva” turns on Eden, a Yakin alter-ego, who hesitates about marrying his French partner who has moved to New York to live with him.

A simple plot summary is unlikely, however, to do justice to a film which is part musical – with set pieces in a barroom, at a wedding,...