Footnote

Written and directed by Joseph Cedar, this Israeli film won Best Screenplay at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, losing to the Iranian film A Separation. Eliezer and his son Uriel are both professors in the Talmud studies department at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Eliezer is a meticulous philologist whose thirty years of work went unrecognized, passed over for the Israel Prize again and again across two decades, and whose life's work was rendered moot when a rival published the same findings a month before him. The title comes from this: his sole piece of academic recognition is a footnote citing him in a book by his late mentor. His son, by contrast, is prolific, popular and decorated, a rising star. Then word arrives that the father has won the Israel Prize, except the committee called the wrong Shkolnik and the award was meant for the son. The film won nine Ophir Awards, holds ninety percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and A. O. Scott named it the fourth best film of its year, writing that it turns a trivial anecdote into tragicomic opera. Stage comedian Shlomo Bar-Aba returned to film with this role after twenty years away. Who it's for: Viewers who enjoy sharp dramas that braid academic pettiness with father son tension. Who it's not for: Not for anyone wanting action or a clean resolution, since the film closes without showing the outcome.