The Death of Cinema and My Father Too (2020)

“When a filmmaker already quotes Jorge Luis Borges in his director’s notes, one half-expects what’s in store — in short, anything but your typical, easy-to-follow narrative,” writes Cineuropa portal dedicated to the European film industry about this film — and rightly so. The Death of Cinema and My Father Too, which was released with the official label of the canceled Cannes Film Festival 2020, has several plot layers, which freely shift into one another, intersect and merge. It seems that Iran is preparing a massive military attack and will soon annihilate Tel Aviv. The director’s father dies, but the former cannot let his parent go (they say that The Death of Cinema and My Father Too became a very personal story for Dani Rosenberg and was based on his experience of when Rosenberg the elder got sick). The director then tries to make his father stay in our world for as long as can be, but is meeting resistance from his gloomy parent. It is impossible to distinguish the real from the imaginary in this film — and so the local plot becomes even more intimate.