Time Off

It is 1982, shortly after the outbreak of the Lebanon War. Yonatan, a soldier and a loner, discovers an attraction for his commanding officer during practice field maneuvers. His unit is given an afternoon off in Jerusalem before they move to the northern border. After comic encounters with American girls and contact with a seductive female soldier, Yonatan wanders to Independence Park, a well-known place for homosexual trysts. He then witnesses something that transforms his life. TIME OFF is the first Israeli film to address homosexuality and the military. It effectively moves homosexuals from the margins of society into the mainstream.

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.