Florentene

September, 1995: Hope is in the air and there is a feeling that peace is on its way. But matters of state are not of major interest to the young people who live in Florentene, the new Bohemian district in South Tel-Aviv, where ritzy lofts are cropping up in a run-down industrial neighborhood. The principal characters in this television serial include a former kibbutznik, a Russian immigrant, two professional women, a renegade from an Orthodox family and two openly gay men. Gay and straight relationships are portrayed with equally steamy frankness. Characters are beautifully played by Israel's best young talent, including Ayelet Zu'rer (THE DYBBUK). The final episode of the six to be screened deals with the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. Director Eytan Fox (SONG OF THE SIREN) mingles drama and news footage to show how Rabin's death profoundly affects the young people of the neighborhood, blurring the lines between the personal and the political. This is a hip, beautifully written television show, wildly popular among Israeli 20 - somethings-and much better than anything we've seen on American network television!

Eytan Fox was born in New York City and came to Israel as a child. He grew up in Jerusalem and after serving in the Army, studied in Tel Aviv University's school of Film and Television. His first film Time Off, a 50-minute drame about sexual identity in the Israeli Army (SF JFF), won 1990 Movie of the Year award from the Israeli Film Institute and many international prizes, among them First prize in Munich's International Student Film Festival. His first feature film Song of the Siren (SF JFF), a romantic comedy about life in Tel Aviv during the 1991 Gulf War, was Israel's biggest box-office success in 1994. Over the past two years, Fox has created and directed Florentene, a dramatic series for Israeli Television that examines the life of young people in urban Israel against the background of Rabin's assasination. The series won First Prize in the Televiaion category of the 1997 Jerusalem International Film Festival. Eytan Fox is currently working on a script for his first English-speaking film, tentatively entitled 1967.