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The Ophir Award as best supporting actor
For this role. Tell us a little bit about how you prepared to take on this very heavy role.
Well, I knew it's not an easy mission.
So I was fortunate enough to have 0:00:13.419, 0:00:17.439 A lot of time to do research. 0:00:17.439, 0:00:23.840 And me and my lovely costar Yoav Rotman went and spent lots of time in
institutes in Tel Aviv
then started to grab information
then later on we met families
and in the end we met a lot of people that have autism
and we spent some time with them and after that I was connected to the lovely stage director
who did a huge show about
people with disabilities
So I talked to him and
it was about
four months that we had these preparations
so it was lovely.
You did a fantastic job. The film itself was based on a short story?
Yes. Can you tell us a little bit about the story? Yeah, the history was funny,
When I was young, when I was I think about twelve,
my mother got a phone call from a young director,
that was making a short film to graduate his film school
and he wanted me to act the role of Yoni
the younger kid.
But I didn't do it in the end
and after so many years the short story got
so much success from all around
Like in Europe, it won the Berlin Film Festival
and then later on, he decided to do a feature film out of it.
So it's a nice story.
That's the way I met the guy for the first time,
when I was very young
and then when I was 23, he just called
and asked if I wanted to do this role.
And I realized that
it's not an easy job,
and I could see that this is when acting is going to a better place
that when you do something,
that will maybe get attention,
of telling a story of this young boy, Tomer.
How has this film been received in Israel?
Both in the general community, and in
specifically the disability community?
I think that a lot of people really got connected to this thing, because the subject is very universal.
Also in Israel, you could see a lot of hard stuff going on there.
like with the Institute closing down, and that stuff really does
happen in Israel a lot.
So I think that in that way it was very helpful to tell the story
so that people could get more knowledge
about this stuff and maybe
give money, and help this institution
to be
still working.
The audience really liked it because in the end this movie is about communication,
it's about family and
I remember when I was doing preparations for the role,
I was talking to families and they were
always talking about how you want to
communicate to one another.
In this film, you could see that all the families don't really communicate
to one another
until the end.
Do you have hope for this family?
The last show of the film is
after
we have this nice little bright sun-shower, we then go into shots of the storm
There is a big storm coming, what are your hopes?
I think that they will survive the storm,
because in the beginning of the film you could see that the family is kind of
broken
and I think because Tomer is coming back home,
and I really believe that is what people should do all the time.
A lot of families in Israel have their son,
have their children in an institute,
and they don't visit them. And that's what I think is the biggest lesson.
When Tomer comes back home,
he really helps to connect
the entire family together.
I think this movie is also about
brothers and I was so lucky to have Yoav with me,
we really had a good connection and we really became good friends till this day.
He was of course terrific as well.
We're going to have time for just a couple of questions from the audience.
What is your next role going to be?
Actually, I did a TV series in Israel, it's about Haabat House.
I went to Nepal for about two months.
Three months actually. And we shot this story about
young couples, young Haabati couples
who are building this house in Nepal, and a lot of troubles are coming in with them.
So that was
my latest role.
Mikhail has of course been in other
major Israeli films that have been released in the states,
Lebanon, Lost Island
and many others that you can catch him in, in the bigger Israeli films.
Let me grab a question from you over here.
You played someone that is autistic very very well. What did you do to prepare, did you watch people behave?
I've watched people behave, and I've been working and talking
all day long with people that have autism.
It was such a lovely journey for me.
I wonder if there was any push-back to you playing a person with autism here in the United States? You just had a panel last week- there really is a movement to have people with disabilities portrayed in the roles that are being portrayed in cinema and on television. So I'm wondering what the situation was in Israel, is there such a movement as well?
Not that many, no. I think that
they didn't deal with that subject
that much.
That's why I really had a pleasant time working on this film.
I think Israeli films are
going into a lot of
political movies
and they do a lot of stuff that they don't really
tell other stories, so it was a unique story to tell, about
families. Most Israeli films are about families, or about war.
That was kind of in the middle. I don't know which is better.
So that was powerful.
And I think that
when I thought about acting this role,
you could fall into cliches,
you could fall into all those American movies that I used to watch when I was young,
which was Rain Man and all those other movies.
But I realized that I could do something with my acting
that can reach out to other people.
You did a fabulous job, and the film I think really does resinate.
Thank you all, thank you Mikhail. Thank you, have a nice day.
We'd love to see you at more screenings. What we have now is a screening of "Run If You Can," fabulous film, don't miss it.
You can get your tickets upstairs at the box office. We will be starting in about ten minutes.
But I have to ask that you go upstairs after the reception.