'Seven Blessings': THR Presents Q&A With Ayelet Menahemi and Eleanor Sela

The Hollywood Reporter

The Hollywood Reporter's Brian Davids sat down with Ayelet Menahemi and Eleanor Sela to discuss 'Seven Blessings' in a THR Q&A powered by Vision Media.

Transcript

00:00 (upbeat music)

00:02 - Hello, I'm Brian Davids

00:06 and welcome to the Hollywood Reporter presents a Q&A

00:09 with the filmmakers of "Seven Blessings,"

00:11 Israel's entry for a Best International Feature Film

00:13 nomination at the 96th Academy Awards.

00:17 Joining me today is director Ayelet Minah-Hami,

00:21 actor and co-writer, Eleanor Sella.

00:24 And before we discuss the film,

00:26 I think it's important to acknowledge

00:28 that we're talking at a time, a very precarious time

00:30 for the country of Israel.

00:32 So I just, I think we should start off by asking

00:35 how are the two of you doing at a time like this?

00:38 - Wow. (laughs)

00:40 Actually, we are broken. (laughs)

00:47 It was very hard to decide to come to this campaign

00:51 and to leave our families behind in Israel during the war.

00:57 I have three children and our husbands,

01:00 but we thought it's very important to come

01:06 and to show the world a film about a beautiful

01:11 and noisy complex family, like we are the Israelis,

01:17 and to show a film that has so many values of humanity

01:25 that we insist continuing, believe in it.

01:30 But it's not easy, but we had two screening in LA

01:38 and one yesterday in New York,

01:42 and the reactions to the film is so warm

01:46 and we are feeling alive again.

01:50 - Thank you for joining us today.

01:51 And I hope this is some form of a distraction,

01:54 albeit a brief one.

01:56 - Thank you for having us, yeah.

01:58 - You know, Eleanor, I want to start with you

01:59 as the co-writer, because the film centers around Marie,

02:03 who at two years old was given by her mother to her aunt,

02:08 who was infertile.

02:10 Did you have a personal connection to this custom?

02:13 Where did you discover this practice

02:15 that is more common than people might think?

02:17 - Actually, it's based on a true story of my family

02:22 and Raymond's family, that we are second cousins.

02:27 So yeah, two sisters of my grandmother gave two daughters

02:33 to the two older barren sisters.

02:39 And actually at the beginning of writing,

02:43 I knew just about one.

02:45 I didn't know that we have two stories like this

02:48 in our family because they didn't talk.

02:50 And then I called Raymond and asked her to join me

02:54 to the processing of the writing.

02:58 And she was shocked.

03:00 She asked me, "Did you know that my mother-in-law

03:03 is also a child who was given in her childhood?"

03:07 And I said, "No, I didn't know."

03:09 But then I started to realize that this is a phenomenon

03:14 and not a small story, a big story from my family.

03:20 So it was really exciting.

03:22 And after the film was released in Israel,

03:26 I was flooded with a lot of messages from women

03:32 with roots all over the world that told me

03:36 I was given also, I was given also, you know,

03:39 from Iraq, from Iran, from Italy, from Greece,

03:44 even from China and from Japan.

03:48 So it started from a private story of my family

03:53 and became a global phenomenon.

03:56 - You know, even when we were screening the film

03:59 in theaters and we had Q&A afterwards,

04:03 screenings that we were present in,

04:06 even in the audience, people will stand up and say,

04:10 "I had this in my family."

04:12 People, a few even stood up and said,

04:14 "It happened to me personally.

04:16 I was given away."

04:17 And this was really mind-blowing,

04:19 the spread of the phenomena and the way it was hushed.

04:24 - Ayelet, there's a saying that specificity is universal.

04:29 And while "Seven Blessings," that tradition is very unique,

04:32 practically everyone on the planet can relate

04:34 to those awkward and contentious family dinners.

04:37 How did you achieve those natural and authentic dynamics

04:41 within all those dinner scenes in the film?

04:44 - It all relies on casting.

04:47 And rehearsals.

04:49 And a lot of research.

04:51 And the research was really into the dynamics

04:55 and the choreography and the sensual experience

05:00 of me being in so many meals

05:06 as I was preparing to do this.

05:09 So it was kind of an experiential research.

05:14 And I was really mapping the whole thing,

05:19 which is really chaotic.

05:23 And I wanted to maintain this chaos.

05:26 But even if you want to create chaos,

05:28 you have to plan how to do it.

05:31 So by casting non-actors,

05:34 actual family members of Eleanor and Raymond,

05:40 almost half of the cast is not professional.

05:43 But by casting them,

05:45 they knew how these things were happening in real life.

05:50 They have this every other week.

05:55 So in a way, they were mentoring

05:58 the real professional actors and actresses

06:01 how to feel, how to navigate the spaces

06:07 of these narrow locations that we had.

06:11 And then we just rehearsed mise-en-scene

06:14 and we shot it almost documentary style,

06:17 knowing that the people will always be at the same spot

06:20 because they know what they do

06:21 and they know where they are in every moment in the scene.

06:25 And once you do that, whichever angle you cover that,

06:30 you can edit because everyone is in the same place.

06:34 So this was the concept.

06:36 And we had a wonderful cameraman,

06:37 Buzz Yonatan Yakov, and he's a dancer.

06:41 - Yeah.

06:41 - And a religious Jew.

06:44 And I'm a secular Jew, but I told him,

06:50 if I would ever believe in God is when I see you,

06:55 using your camera, when I see you shoot.

06:59 - We knew where we supposed to be,

07:02 but we never knew where is Buzz.

07:05 - Where he will be.

07:07 - Yeah, he will like jumping

07:10 and it was amazing with one camera, only one camera.

07:15 - Sorry, I have to say one more thing.

07:18 Is that usually an actor or an actress

07:21 know when they are on camera

07:24 and then that's where they give their best.

07:27 But I told him from the beginning,

07:29 you're always on camera.

07:31 Just act as if you're always on camera

07:34 because you might be, you never know.

07:37 So be prepared, be there as you are,

07:40 you are always in the shot.

07:42 And that made it so real,

07:44 because even the margins of the frame were always active.

07:50 - Yeah, I wanna ask about that.

07:52 Eleanor, when you were in the middle of all this chaos

07:55 and there's conversation happening around,

07:58 surrounding the main drama,

08:00 what was everyone talking about?

08:02 Were you talking about stuff about your day

08:04 as it was already?

08:05 Did you come up with something to talk about?

08:07 What was the topic of conversation?

08:10 - Yeah, it's such a good question.

08:11 And it's the first time we had this question.

08:15 Actually, we even wrote these conversations,

08:20 those conversations we actually wrote,

08:23 because it's a film that happened in the 19th.

08:28 So-- - 19th.

08:30 - Yeah, in the 19th.

08:32 So we should know what is going on those days.

08:36 So we actually gave the actors subjects

08:41 that can be right for these times and for this family.

08:47 And everyone could choose the subjects

08:53 that he wants to speak about.

08:57 But it was all, looks like improvisation, but it wasn't.

09:02 - Yeah, like, I mean, we know that in the '90s,

09:05 the cell phones just came in.

09:08 So we said that they can explain,

09:11 try to explain to the more elderly members of the family,

09:15 what is a cell phone?

09:16 So the taxi driver says that he saw some people

09:20 that start having this in their cab,

09:22 and he's trying to explain it to the aunt and the mother

09:27 that don't understand the concept.

09:31 And this just went on and on in the background.

09:34 And it was really easy for him

09:35 once he knew what to talk about.

09:38 - Marie's family, including your character, Erit,

09:40 believe that she was better off with her aunt and uncle.

09:43 She had a tutor, she had her own room,

09:46 she had all the attention she could ever want.

09:48 Of course, we don't have Raymond here

09:50 to give her perspective on this,

09:52 but just for the two of you,

09:54 what is the rest of the family not understanding

09:57 about Marie's perspective and how hard this was for her?

10:02 - You know, they can't understand her pain.

10:07 And I can tell you,

10:13 I saw last week or two weeks ago,

10:20 because I thought about this a lot

10:23 during those horrible days.

10:27 And I saw a video of a minister of our government

10:32 that came to visit the families of the kidnap.

10:41 And they told him the same text of Marie from the film,

10:48 like we wrote it.

10:52 They say, "Go down on your knees

10:55 and ask for our forgiveness."

10:59 And it was really unbelievable for me.

11:02 I thought even in such a horrible situation,

11:07 all what people need is that you will acknowledge their pain.

11:13 And this is the thing that the family can't do.

11:19 Why it's so hard for us to say, "I'm sorry."

11:23 Why it's so hard for us to see the other's one pain.

11:28 And there is so much suffer in the world

11:32 because we can't see the other's pain.

11:36 And I think this is the real reason

11:41 they can't understand her.

11:44 And also, I think Marie thought she came

11:49 to ask for forgiveness,

11:52 but actually because of her huge pain,

11:57 she's looking for revenge.

12:01 And I thought about this also those days

12:06 because before the war, I couldn't understand this thing

12:11 that you are so in painful that you want a revenge.

12:15 But now it's sad, but now I can even understand this.

12:21 I don't want to understand this, but this is how it is.

12:26 - Ayelet, there are multiple languages spoken in this film.

12:31 How did you keep those organized on the day?

12:34 Did you have multiple script supervisors or coordinators

12:38 to kind of keep it all correct from each perspective

12:41 or from each language?

12:43 How did you account for that?

12:44 - Well, the concept was in the screenplay

12:47 from the beginning.

12:48 So we knew, first of all, that there's no way around it

12:53 and people will have to be coached

12:57 because Moroccan Jewish language is not exactly prevailing

13:02 in even in Moroccan people who are originally coming

13:07 from Moroccan Jewish descent.

13:09 And since there are not so many, or let me say this way,

13:18 I didn't want the casting process to be limited

13:21 by the ability of an actor and an actress

13:26 to speak French or Jewish Moroccan.

13:31 So we just decided to go for coaches

13:35 and to translate to phonetic Hebrew everything

13:40 and to during this one month of pre-production

13:44 or even we started before that

13:46 because like Gracia and Hannah are above 70 years old

13:51 and they need more time and they said they need more time.

13:56 So it was a very rigorous process

14:00 to teach them phonetically French and Arabic.

14:04 And it was, they did it amazingly, really.

14:10 But we worked on it really hard.

14:14 - Sorry, I wanted to say that.

14:16 No, you can tell, I wanted to say something else.

14:22 Oh, okay, it's a two good stories, but okay.

14:25 No, it's not a story.

14:27 I just wanted to mention that Tiki Dayan,

14:30 the ones who plays Hannah's role,

14:35 she's an Syrian Jewish, she's from a Syrian Jewish family

14:44 and Gracia Rivka Bachar, she's from an Egypt Jewish family.

14:49 So the new Arabic, but it's a different Arabic

14:53 and it was so confusing and everything was so,

14:56 it was really interesting to see how in their age

15:02 they are learning and put aside their language,

15:07 the language that they were born with it.

15:10 - You know, Marie hasn't seen her family in 10 years.

15:14 Do the three of you come up with a backstory

15:17 to fill those missing years?

15:19 - She did. - Yeah, of course.

15:20 - Raymond did. - Yeah.

15:22 - Raymond mapped all of Marie's biography

15:27 from the start through the missing years until the present.

15:33 And she did it beautifully.

15:35 - Now, Eleanor, you have two powerful bedroom scenes

15:38 back to back in this film.

15:40 You start off with Marie, you're bonding,

15:43 you're having a good time, you're laughing.

15:45 And then that turns into an argument.

15:48 Marie leaves the room and then Irit's husband comes in

15:54 for a very reluctant and emotional sex scene.

15:58 So can the two of you just talk about filming those scenes

16:03 back to back, they probably weren't actually shot

16:04 back to back, but can you just tell me about the filming

16:07 of those two very, very emotional scenes?

16:10 - The first scene is actually one shot.

16:15 So it was like, it's a scene of six and a half minutes,

16:21 right, and in one shot, it was, but you know,

16:26 Raymond and I have such a strong relationship

16:31 because of the writing together.

16:34 So it like happened naturally.

16:39 And the other scene of the bed, it was, you know,

16:46 I wrote this scene and then when I came to this scene,

16:53 when I write, I don't think about myself as an actress.

16:57 I'm so, you know, writing for me, it's really a holy stuff.

17:02 I can't think about anything else.

17:05 And then when I got the text as an actress, I said,

17:08 "Oh my God, what did you think?

17:10 What are you going to do now?"

17:13 And, but we had intimate,

17:18 - Coordinator.

17:23 - Yeah.

17:24 - Intimacy coordinator.

17:26 - Yeah, and it was very good for me, very good.

17:29 And it was very respectful process.

17:34 - I just wanted to add that it was shot back to back

17:41 because we were a very low budget film

17:45 and that was the location, the bedroom.

17:49 So we shot a day of back to back scenes.

17:52 And the intimacy coordination concept in Israel

18:00 has just started.

18:02 There's not much of it happening.

18:05 There's mainly one person who got, you know,

18:10 (speaking in foreign language)

18:17 No, I got the certificate to do this.

18:20 So, and the actor that plays Iris' husband

18:27 he didn't understand what she wants from him.

18:30 He didn't, he didn't know what was the need for all this

18:35 because it's kind of a, you know, macho, cynical person

18:40 and amazing actor, but he didn't think he needed it.

18:44 And it was amazing how they both gave in

18:47 to the process of intimacy coordination, which is so new.

18:54 And it was so helpful.

18:58 It really helped it to become a special scene.

19:02 - You know, in one screening in Israel,

19:06 in the end of a religious woman came to me

19:11 and just give me a hug and say, thank you for this scene.

19:16 And-- - And she was religious.

19:19 - Yeah, she was religious.

19:20 And it's, I asked her, is it okay for you?

19:25 And she said, no, it was really hard for us to see this.

19:28 We are not supposed to see this,

19:31 but I want to thank you about this scene

19:33 because I think every woman has been once in such situation.

19:38 And I really wanted to show that sometimes you can,

19:46 you can find the love in your house.

19:51 You don't need to look it for, with another man or,

19:56 and you just need a new perspective of your husband

20:01 and you can choice what you are,

20:07 you can choose what you are thinking about your husband

20:10 or what you, you can choose what you feel.

20:13 If you just believe you have the right to love, you know?

20:18 And Irit didn't think she has the right to love

20:23 until she saw Mari.

20:26 - I want to add something about the one-shot scene

20:29 between the sisters, if I may.

20:31 We didn't know it was gonna be one shot,

20:36 but when we did the rehearsal, all the rehearsals were,

20:42 I mean, the one-on-one scenes,

20:45 rehearsals were done mostly in my house.

20:47 So they got into my husband and mine, the bed we sleep in.

20:52 - Yeah, I asked her, "Do you really want us

20:58 to get into your bed and do the rehearsals?"

21:01 She said, "Yes, yes, I want to feel authentic."

21:03 - And then they do the scene and I shoot it with my iPhone

21:08 and it just goes on and on.

21:11 They were, they perfected it by then because they wrote it

21:15 and they rewrote it so, so long

21:17 and they're very, very professional actresses.

21:21 So they learned everything.

21:23 They were really, it was just a such a free flowing

21:28 back and forth, so with such a documentary feel

21:33 that by the time it ended,

21:36 just the first take that I did of the rehearsal,

21:39 I knew for sure that this has to be one shot.

21:44 And actually, if you compare this first rehearsal

21:47 from the iPhone to the scene as it is in the movie,

21:52 apart from being shot by this master of camera,

22:00 it was quite similar.

22:03 - Well, Ayelet and Eleanor,

22:04 congratulations on "Seven Blessings"

22:06 and thank you for joining "The Hollywood Reporter Presents."

22:09 (upbeat music)

22:12 (upbeat music)

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