Israeli Oscar nominee hopes his film will start difficult conversations - The Jewish Chronicle

When Israeli director Meyer Levinson-Blount decided to make a film about an Arab Israeli butcher who is accused of taking down hostage posters in a Tel Aviv supermarket, he set himself the additional challenge of acting in the film too.

In his short Oscar-nominated film, Butcher’s Stain, he plays the part of Nir, who accuses colleague Samir, played by Omar Sameer, of removing the posters from the shop’s staff cafeteria.

Speaking at the Tel Aviv University Trust’s annual film night in London, Levinson-Blount, 24, told the audience: “I think I [decided to act in the film] to sort of say that I'm not outside of the things that are happening to Samir. I'm a part of it. Just because I'm making a movie about racism and discrimination doesn't mean that I don't have a part within the issues that are within our society.”

While the film, which has already won a silver medal at the Student Academy Awards, isn’t based on a true story, its director said that while working in a supermarket after October 7, he saw a nation that “was traumatised collectively by the events. There were many people there that had sons or daughters that were going to war in Gaza. There were many of them who had family members who had died on the 7th of October and afterwards, and people who had lost their homes in the north.”

At the same time, Levinson-Blount witnessed “a finger pointed at the Arab Israelis within our society, and I wanted to kind of talk about both things at the same time because I think that, a lot of the times, they’re talked about separately. [I wanted] to try to paint a complex picture of what society looked like to me after the 7th of October.”

Omar Sameer (left) and Meyer Levinson-Blount in Butcher's Stain (Photo: Steve Tisch School of Film & Television, TAU/Meyer Levinson-Blount)[Missing Credit]

Rather than aiming to criticise Israeli society, the Manhattan-born film student, who moved to Israel at the age of 12, made the film “from a place of concern for the place where I live and the people that I care about”, saying: “It comes from a place of telling a story that isn't necessarily always told and…trying to create a conversation about those kind of things that I think do exist. But more importantly, we do need to have a conversation about issues that are controversial to talk about in order to fix them.”

Levinson-Blount, a former yeshiva student who now attends TAU’s Steve Tisch School of Film and Television, said he came across Omar Sameer, who plays Samir, by going through an agent for Arab Israeli actors.

“When this agent read part of the script, he was like: ‘Listen, I'm only going to give you this actor. I'm not letting you audition any other actors. This is your guy. This is the person who should be playing in your film.’

“And when he [Omar] got to the audition, it was very obvious to me that this is the actor who is going to play in my film. He encompassed the character in this way that taught me a lot of things about the script that I didn't even know.”

In conversation with television producer Dan Patterson, Levinson-Blount said he was so struck by Omar’s audition that when the latter said he was unable to manage the production dates, they rescheduled. “It caused some trouble, but it was definitely worth it,” said the director.

Meyer Levinson-Blount (Photo: Gaby Wine)[Missing Credit]

As well as the question mark over Samir’s culpability running through the film, there is also a sub-plot of Samir’s broken marriage and the complexities of being a single dad. “Really what I was trying to do was to tell a human story rather than an argument…to show essentially the experience of being a guy like [Samir],” said Levinson Blount.

On a personal level, he said working with Omar had enabled him to “connect more with that experience of [the Arab Israeli] community”.

With Israel facing both external threats and divisions within society, and extremism on the rise globally, Levinson-Blunt says film has a vital role to play. “Films [are] this tool that you can communicate with on the human level and not on the political level, not on the way that you see on the news, where we see the hottest stories, and all the provocations on social media.

“It's very hard to be hopeful in dark times like these, where you know so many people that have been victims of violence all over, but …I kind of remind myself that when I was growing up, it was better, and that it can be better…For me, as a filmmaker, I have to have hope.”

The 98th Academy Awards are on March 15 on ITV and ITVX

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Topics:

The Oscars

Israeli film