Shoshana Shani-Lavie

Aliza mizrahi, the building cleaner, solves a murder where the police fails

In July 1976, an Air France flight from Tel-Aviv to Paris via Athens was hijacked and forced to land in Entebbe, Uganda. The Jewish passengers were separated and held hostage in demand to release many terrorists held in Israeli prisons. After much debate, the Israeli government sent an elite commando unit to raid the airfield and release the hostages.

Menahem Golan directs this warmhearted comedy. A wily widower that deals in used furniture fights progress (and city hall). His home slated to be bulldozed, his business in trouble and his daughter poised to leave the nest with her wealthy fiancé, small-time Tel Aviv junk dealer Lupo (Yehuda Barkan) still finds the courage to keep his life, and his pride, intact.

A comic and episodic satire, the film uses improvisation to illustrate the clash between fantasy and reality in real life. Although conceived in the style of Mekas’ “Hallelujah the hills” (1962), it’s an authentically Israeli satire, an openly rebellious and individualistic expression that poked fun at the sacred myths of earlier zionist films. The technique of film within the film is used to portray cinema as reflection of the imagination, a miracle based on dreams and fantasies that take on concrete characteristics – parallel to the miracle of Israel, the dream that has become reality. Although not a commercial success, its importance is beyond any measure, though it remains a unique experiment, boldly uncommercial and subversive, out of any context in that patriotic, ideological epoch.