Anaphase

In his abbreviated one and a half terms as Prime Minister of Israel, Menachem Begin faced a maelstrom of challenges and made a handful of fateful decisions that led to both creating peace and launching a hubristic war. This multi-faceted portrait merges rare archival footage shown for the first time, as well as current interviews of key figures from Begin’s time as Prime Minister.

In Search of Ladino follows Ladino speakers, their culture, their memories and hopes for their mother tongue. This unique film is one of the earliest works presenting Ladino-speaking Holocaust survivors in Israel, and it provides rare documentation of their testimonies and songs. Filmmaker David Perlov’s camera glances on the faces of the people, as he listens carefully to their stories and songs. The film was meant to be part of a trilogy about languages: Hebrew, Yiddish and Ladino, but Perlov only managed to make the first film.

Follows Sharon's term as PM from the moment he was elected. The series goes through his leadership under mass terror attacks, his willingness to support the two-state solution, his decision to start Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, his demand from the Palestinians to replace Yasser Arafat as a condition for all negotiations, the establishment of the separation fence, and the disengagement from Gaza that turned his greatest supporters into sworn enemies. In addition, the series returns to selected chapters in Sharon's life as a child in Kfar Malal, as a family person, as a soldier and as minister in Israeli governments. Among the interviewees: Gilad Sharon, Dov Weissglas, Eyal Bronze, Uri Monday, Moshe Kaplinsky, Israel Maymon, Assi Yavni, Tzipi Livni, Gideon Saar and Aria Eldad.

The three episodes of this limited series deal with three events in the center of Prime Minister Begin: The peace agreement with Egypt, changes in the economic-social field, and the Lebanon war, during which he declared that he could no longer go on and retired. At the same time, he created the Devprived Alliance. Under this alliance, the ultra-Orthodox parties joined the coalition, the NRP received important ministries, including the ministry of education, and the Mizrahi-Traditional peripherents entered the corridors of the government.