Saved by the Ball

Ehud Banai, now Israel's biggest singer-songwriter, got in the music business when he was over thirty. This is the story of his music, his friends, and his musical inspirations - from the beginning.

A young Holocaust survivor who descends into crime; an Italian-Jewish engineer who wants to see a movie; a German Christian who forgives her husband’s murderer because of her Buddhist faith; and a Jewish woman who carries on an affair with a Nazi and exposes members of the resistance so that she and her children may survive: their fates intersect when two bullets are fired into a queue of people waiting to see “A Man Escaped” at Tel Aviv’s Cinema North in 1957.

Four years in the life of Muhammad “Misha” Alsheikh, a teenage pianist living between Palestinian, Russian and Jewish cultures. It takes Muhammad three hours to get to his piano lessons, but his dream is bigger than borders. Between checkpoints, auditions and his father’s will that he become a doctor, he tries to fulfill his dream of becoming a professional pianist – and also of staying happy.

As a young promising poet marked for greatness, Yossi Sarid unintentionally found himself in politics and eventually became the leader of the Left. He was ambitious; aspiring to save those on the margins of society but was often rejected by them. His dream of serving as Education Minister came true; when it did, he chose to insist on his principles at the cost of overthrowing the government. For 50 weeks and five days, Education Minister Sarid fought with the Orthodox Shas party that demanded its education movement’s debts be covered, and refused to yield even when he was called as “Evil Haman” and when the Prime Minister said he’d turned into a liability. This is the story of the eternal opposition leader who refused to compromise despite the consequences.

The story that was silenced for 91 years was revealed for the first time: in August 1933 the leaders of the Zionist Organization signed "transfer agreements" with Nazi Germany. As part of the agreement, about 60 thousand Jews with a lot of property will arrive in the Land of Israel. Is it permissible to make a "contract with the devil" to save people?

A musical biography of one of the most influential and iconic figures in the history of Israeli culture. "A Standard Love Song" is a musical biography of Arik Einstein, the artist whose voice was an anchor of Israeli culture, and whose story is the story of Tel Aviv and of Israel and Israelis: dreamers, warriors, artists and lovers.