Italy’s Intramovies has acquired global rights outside of Israel and France on Israeli director Dani Rosenberg’s Gaza-Strip conflict drama “The Vanishing Soldier.”
“Vanishing Soldier” is Rosenberg’s second feature after “The Death of Cinema and My Father Too,” which was in the official selection in Cannes 202O and won the Jerusalem Film Festival’s top prize.
The film is about an 18-year-old Israeli soldier who flees the Gaza battlefield and heads back to his girlfriend in Tel Aviv only to discover that the military elite is convinced he was kidnapped in the fog of war. What ensues is a tragicomic journey and takes place over a period of 24 hours on the streets of Tel Aviv.
“Vanishing Soldier,” which stars Ido Tako, Mika Reiss, and Israeli singer Efrat Ben Tzur, is produced by Chilik Micheali, Avraham Pirchi, Itamar Pirchi for United Channels Movies (UCM). The film has been financed by The Israel Film Fund.
Under separate deals, Paris-based Dulac Distribution will release the film, that is now in post, in France while “Vanishing Soldier” will go out in Israel via United King Films.
Intramovies’ head of acquisitions Marco Valerio Fusco in a statement praised “Vanishing Soldier” for taking “The spectator into a kaleidoscope of contrasting emotions” and called it “A breathtaking, existential thriller set in the craziness of the state of war.”
Michel Zana, head of distribution at Dulac, noted that the film “Not only casts a sharp and uncompromising look at what is currently happening in Israel, but also stands for young people all over the world who are embroiled in wars, conflicts or ideals that are not their own, and that they reject.”
Intramovies is market premiering another Israeli film in Cannes, “The Future,” the second feature by Noam Kaplan that will premiere in the international competition at Tribeca Film Festival in July.