PLAYOFF
Directed by Eran RIKLIS
The Human Ressources Manager, Lemon Tree, The Syrian Bride
Thirty years after surviving the Holocaust, a famous Israeli basketball coach goes back to Germany
to coach the national team.
SYNOPSIS
Playoff tells the story of legendary Israeli basketball coach Max Stoller who became a national hero when he won the European Championship with Maccabi Tel Aviv in the late Seventies. But Max became a national traitor equally fast, when he accepted against all odds the job of turning the totally hopeless West German national team into Olympic contenders. This despite the public outrage in Israel, and despite his mother regarding his actions as an act of betrayal. Max always maintains that Germany – where he was born before the war and where his father was taken away by the Gestapo – means nothing to him, and that training their national team is just another job on his path to NBA glory. But things aren’t as simple as Max pretends them to be. The only person he seems to be able to relate to is a Turkish immigrant woman, Deniz, and her cheeky teenage daughter Sema. Max develops a complicated relationship with the two while he succeeds in reinventing the German team despite resistance from the players. When he discovers new facts about old family secrets he realizes that his whole life has been based on betrayal and lies, and that one cannot run away forever from one’s own past and demons. Finally confronting the past, he becomes a symbol of his own personal victory.
AN ORIGINAL STORY BASED ON TRUE EVENTS
Israel/Germany/France /// English/German/Hebrew/Turkish /// Drama /// 107’
CAST Danny HUSTON, Amira CASAR /// WRITERS Gidon MARON, David AKERMAN /// CINEMATOGRAPHER Rainer KLAUSMANN /// PRODUCTION COMPANIES EGOLI TOSSELL FILM, TOPIA COMMUNICATIONS, FIDELITE FILMS /// IN ASSOCIATION WITH UNITED KING FILMS, WILDBUNCH /// PRODUCERS Michael SHARFSHTEIN, Jens MEURER, Marc MISSONNIER, Olivier DELBOSC/// EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS Moshe EDERY, Leon EDERY, Judy TOSSELL ///
ABOUT ERAN RIKLIS
Eran Riklis is one of Israel’s most acclaimed film-makers. His most recent film is THE HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGER (2010) which followed LEMON TREE, winner of the Audience Award at the 2008 Berlin Film Festival which enjoyed worldwide critical and box-office success. Riklis’previous films include THE SYRIAN BRIDE, winner of 16 international awards, including Best Film in Montreal and Audience Award in Locarno, the award-winning CUP FINAL (1992, presented in Venice and at the Berlinale), ZOHAR (1993, the bigggest box-office success of the 1990s in Israel), TEMPTATION, VULCAN JUNCTION and his first film, ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE DAMASCUS (1984).
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
After THE SYRIAN BRIDE and LEMON TREE, which (with CUP FINAL) completed my Middle-East trilogy, I thought it was about time to put my mind and soul into other stories. So no more Israelis and Palestinians, not even the Druze…but in all honesty, am I really going to move that far away from the explosive stories of Middle East? Well, not really…
PLAYOFF is set in Germany almost 30 years ago. It is about being a stranger in a familiar land, about looking at your past in order to understand your future. It is about taking risks, exploring new frontiers, crossing borders (a subject I am quite familiar with), dealing with your demons and moving ahead. It is about personal and national preconceptions, icons, symbols…
Our story puts all these elements to the test by using a very personal story of one man, and then one woman, and a group of basketball players. So we will combine sports, immigration, solitude and searching: the constant search for people, love, friendship, power, understanding – all words that I feel make for a powerful foundation for a powerful story.
If i had to match two films which could be a recent inspiration for PLAYOFF, I would, as directors like to say, describe it as a cross between HEAD-ON and THE LIVES OF OTHERS, a cross which is an intriguing one as it is a fusion of different styles in terms of storytelling and visual conception.
