MELTING SIBERIA

Marina is content in Israel not knowing the identity of her Russian father. Or so she thinks. She was raised by a pragmatic mother, who rarely mentioned the painful story of her one true love abandoning her while she was pregnant. A hero of the Red Army, he disappeared somewhere in the Siberian steppes. Then Marina's son Ido, wanting to understand his roots for his own sake and for his mother's, asks for permission to seek out his grandfather and to put the attempt on film. Is the man still alive? Does he ever think about Marina? Ido contacts someone in his grandmother's hometown, who looks up his grandfather in the phone book. Could it really be that easy?

Marina at first resists Ido when faced with the possibility of contacting her father. She is forced to think about the person who altered the course of her life. It was much easier to think of him in the abstract. But now he is a name printed in phone book. Will she like what she finds? Can she bear what this might do to her elderly mother?

Marina has a grace and emotional depth that is rarely captured so purely on film. Once she decides to pick up the phone and call, she never turns back. The film is about healing the pain of childhood, learning that family can provide irreplaceable comfort and finding that there is no such thing as too little too late.

Amy King

Ido Haar was born in 1974 in Jerusalem. He is a graduate of the Sam Spiegel Film School, Jerusalem. The short films STEP BY STEP and TRICKS, which he directed as a student, participated in the Wolgin Competition of the Jerusalem Film Festival and in film festivals around the world. Recently he has been working as a therapeutic guide at Summit, a psychosocial rehabilitation institute for adolescents in Jerusalem. His first feature-length documentary, MELTING SIBERIA, got a Special Mention, at the Jerusalem Film Festival 2004.

Print Source:
Yoav Roeh, Norma Productions
18 Levontin St.
Tel Aviv 65112
Israel
Tel: 972.3.560.9311
Fax: 972.3.560.9443
Email: yoavroeh@zahav.net.il

PRECEDED BY...SEAL HUNTING WITH DAD
Andrew MacLean
USA, 2004, 12 minutes

An Inuit father teaches his son to hunt seals on the frozen Arctic Ocean off the northern coast of Alaska in this starkly beautiful tale.

Print Source:

Wednesday 6/15 at 12:00 p.m.
Thursday 6/16 at 7:15 p.m.

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