Magic Men

An elderly Jewish man returns to the Greek town where he was born, looking for the man who hid him during the war. His son comes with him: a religious rapper his father does not understand at all. They barely speak along the way, and when they do they argue. The film is not interested in finding the past. It is interested in two generations carrying the same faith differently: the father has moved away from religion and reads his son's observance as display, while the son reads his father's silence as refusal. The journey softens neither. The form is a road film: the Greek coast, small towns, buses. Little dialogue and a lot of silence. Guy Nattiv and Erez Tadmor directed. The pair had made Strangers together earlier, and the structure comes from the same place: two people, one road, a subject that cannot be spoken. Makram J. Khoury plays the father and Zohar Shtrauss the son, with Ariane Labed in the cast. Who it is for: viewers who like Israeli cinema and road films built on generational conflict. Who it is not for: anyone waiting for events. The film is slow, the story is thin and the final section reaches its expected emotional resolution too easily.