Wait for Me

The film intertwines historical events and intimate memories. I observe how architecture represents the transformations of society and those who give form to this architecture. We follow the journey of Munio, my father, born in 1909 in Silesia, Poland, the son of a tenant farmer of a Prussian junker. At the age of 18, Munio goes to Berlin and Dessau to meet Walter Gropius, Kandinsky and Paul Klee at the Bauhaus. In 1933, the Bauhaus was closed by the Nazis, who accused Munio of treason against the German people. Munio was imprisoned, then deported to Basel. He left for Palestine. Upon his arrival in Haifa, he began a career as an architect and adapted European modernist principles to the Middle East.

Through the streets of Jerusalem two teenagers' stories will unite to tell the summer adventure of their lives. Tamar is an amazingly talented but very quiet and insecure girl, who leaves behind her home and all she knows, changing herself unrecognizably -from her looks to her attitude- to brace herself for a dangerous mission to help a loved-one. Asaf, a clumsy, naive, and very shy boy working a boring summer job at City Hall, is given quite a mission himself : to take an uncontrollable stray dog from the pound, put it on a leash, and let it lead him back to its owners to be fined. The more stories Asaf hears about this extraordinary girl, the more he falls for her, and as he and Dinkah continue their journey Asaf becomes aware that Tamar is in grave danger.

The film takes place in 1973 during the Yom Kippur War in which Egypt and Syria launched attacks in Sinai and the Golan Heights. The story is told from the perspective of Israeli soldiers. We are led by Weinraub and his friend Ruso on a day that begins with quiet city streets, but ends with death, destruction and devastation of both body and mind. Various scenes are awash in the surreal, as Weinraub's head hangs out over a rescue helicopter's open door, watching with tranquil desperation as the earth passes beneath, the overpowering whir of the blades creating a hypnotic state. It is not a traditional blood, guts and glory film. There are no men in battle, only the rescue crew trying to pick up the broken pieces.