Director Nitzan Gilady’s dreary pre-army experience grew into a buoyant and imaginative story about a physically challenged woman’s inner world
When a young Nitzan Gilady was saving money to travel before his IDF enlistment, he worked in a toilet paper factory. The daily monotony challenged the filmmaker’s spirit.
“Working there was so depressing,” he says. “For me, I felt like there was no creativity in it. What can you do with the toilet paper? The idea came from that.”
Now, as writer, director and producer of the hit film, “Wedding Doll/Hatuna MiNiyar,” the Tel Aviv-based Gilady revisits the subject in a fictional setting. In his debut feature, a toilet paper factory worker named Hagit with a mild motor impairment is obsessed with wedding-filled fantasies. Her rich imagination fuels tiny gowns she crafts from toilet paper and spurs a questionable romance with a co-worker, the handsome son of the factory owner.
The resulting 82-minute drama has netted a handful of awards and headlined at more than two dozen international film festivals from Palm Beach to Copenhagen. It recently opened in San Francisco and Chicago and heads soon to Portland, Oregon, Washington, D.C. and Vienna.
Distributed abroad by Outsider Pictures and Strand Releasing, Wedding Doll captured a number of awards at home before heading abroad, including Ophir Awards for Best Actress and Best Costume Design. It also landed the Anat Birchi Award for Best First Film and the Haggiag Award for Best Actress.
Gilady’s previous works include the documentaries “In Satmar Custody” (2003) and “The Last Enemy” (1999).
Fresh from a European tour, the 46-year-old shared his thoughts on his successful freshman feature film in this extensive interview with The Times of Israel.
Your lead character, Hagit, has a mild form of cerebral palsy. Is there an autobiographical element to Hagit’s experiences in this film?
There is a little bit of a influence from the relationship between my father and brother. During my brother’s military service they were in Lebanon when a group of terrorists attacked. About 12 years ago, we discovered that my brother has post-trauma disorder.
The whole family didn’t know how to react to it or what to do. And all of a sudden, my father needed to take care of my brother and learn when to be protective and when to let go.
My brother would go out and meet someone and the minute a girl would find out that he had post-trauma, she would disappear. And he wanted to get to married so much. He met this angel and she is unbelievable. And they have a son. He searched for his love and it came to a good place. We are very happy about that.
Are you married?
No. I’m gay.
Have you a love?
Not right now… I have a platonic wife.
What prompted you to make a film about a woman with this particular set of challenges?
It was something I researched. I knew that she had a disability. It had to be specific, so I looked for something with different levels so that she was almost normal in what we call normal. Sometimes I feel that special people are more normal than what we are in our society.
How did you develop the elaborate toilet paper dress the character Hagit wears in the film?
I did a street theater show in Acre which had three women wearing the toilet paper dress. I don’t know where this idea came from.
I had these three women searching in the street for a husband. One of the photos we took stayed with me literally in my drawer and in my head. I knew I would do something with it one day. Five years ago, I took it out and I just started to write the script by looking at the photo. I started asking, “Who is this girl? And what does she wear and where does she work?”
I knew I wanted to put it in Mitzpe Ramon because I lived there for a year for my military service. Our service was for four years. One year was a sort of civilian service and we lived in Mizpeh Ramon in a small unit working for the arts where you try to bring the art into the community.
What is your response to the recognition you’ve received?
I’m very grateful for that. It’s really overwhelming. Every day, I say, “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” You never know what will happen with a film. When you make the film you don’t think about the audience, you focus on the story and make it as good as you can. To see their reaction and to see how people find themselves in the film is fascinating.
We had a screening for youth in a school with disabilities. And to hear their reactions, I was shivering from getting their responses. They were thanking me for bringing that story to the screen. It brought up so many subjects that get swept under the rug. Their parents don’t talk about sexuality with them and the subject of what the parents have to go through is not talked about. There are a lot of stories of parents that whenever they send their children to an organized care facility, they find it very hard to let go. It created a wonderful dialogue and I was very moved by it.
You lived in New York from 1991 to 1996. Was that part of your preparation for your foray into film?
I studied in the Thelma Yellin High Arts School in Tel Aviv [secondary school for the arts]. It’s like [New York’s] FAME. In order to study there, I had to get up early every day and drive from Rehovot.
The whole [film] thing started in New York. I wanted to become an actor. I studied in Circle in the Square and I was sure I was going to be the next Robert Deniro but reality was quite different.
Because of my Yemenite background and my looks, the only parts I would get to play were terrorists. In the end, I gave up on the dream of becoming an actor [in New York] and came back to Israel. And in Israel, I had a hard time trying to get parts in acting. It was always a dream for me to become a director but it seemed, at that time, so difficult. I didn’t study film.
What do you hope the film conveys?
Everyone sees something else. It’s never something you write and you say, “This is my statement.”
It talks about how society accepts the other and how if we love someone, it should not matter who it is. The love is the most important.
It’s also kind of like what we as a society should make an effort to make the special people part of us and part of society and not just put them in hidden places like factories where we don’t see them. Everyone has a talent and we should pay attention that.
What are you currently working on?
I have written the script for two feature films. The fundraising process here is very difficult. I hope I will be able to raise money through foundations and grants. That’s the common way to do it. Either you do it with no money or you get an investor. It’s never a full budget. It’s very difficult.
With the challenges of fundraising, why make films?
It’s not a choice. It was something in me, an urge. It’s what I love. I always wanted it from a very young age. You just never know how you are going to make it. So I started with documentaries. It’s a smaller budget. You don’t need actors. I love documentaries.
Which films have influenced you?
There are so many. I have never studied films academically, they were more of a general influence. I started to watch films from a very young age. And that’s how I studied, from watching and watching and watching and watching. I watched Fellini and Francois Truffaut and that was the beginning.
Your father was born in Aden and your mother was born in Israel to Yemenite parents. How did they respond to your coming out?
I made a documentary called “Family Time,” where my father took us to the Grand Canyon in an RV. It’s all out there. I came out five years before. For them, it was a process to come out.
It was a big argument that we had and after that, great things happened. The film went to the Jerusalem Film Festival in 2012. And they were all so happy, they could finally talk about it. It was a very emotional screening.
As reported The Times of Israel