May 02, 2009 01:00PM EDT

Q&A: Seven Minutes in Heaven

There is very little talking in the first few minutes of Seven Minutes in Heaven, the feature debut for Israeli director Omri Givon. But the story quickly becomes clear: Galia (Reymonde Amsellem in a stirring, melancholy performance) is a survivor of a bus bombing in Jerusalem. A year has passed since the accident and her extensive burns are beginning to heal. Less quick to heal is the memory of her live-in boyfriend Oren (Nadav Nates), who died but whose presence is so deeply felt that he pops up in hallucinations and in flashbacks. She meets a mysterious and helpful stranger, Boaz (Eldad Prives), and her undeniable attraction to him only complicates the grieving process.

Galia moves through life like an amnesiac and, in a way, she is; her memories of the day are lost and she relies on the stories of others to piece together what transpired. In a Q&A following the screening, which was co-presented by the Consulate General of Israel in New York, actress Amsellem said that playing Galia had a lasting impact on her own life: “I was quiet for months. It took a little while to snap out of it.”

Givon plays with linearity in his narrative style, letting the viewer puzzle over what exactly happened on that fateful day until the very end. The director revealed that the movie’s theme of versions of reality—real love versus imagined love, real life versus fantasy life—had an unexpected source of inspiration: horror movies. “I had an idea for a horror movie about a girl whose boyfriend died in a car accident,” Givon said. But after seeing a story on the news about a graveyard for bombed buses, he started working on a script about the survivor of a bombing. “And the other girl [from the horror movie] jumped in.”

 

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Seven Minutes in Heaven has a final screening on Saturday night at 9:30 pm. Tickets are available.