Night Visit (Habikur)
2021 · 25m · Israel
Directed by Mya Kaplan
Genres: drama
Tones: contemplative, dark, tense
Ruthie spends an unusual night with a man from her village; upon discovering the troubling circumstances that led to their encounter, she must seek the truth and find her own way to confront him.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Twenty-five minutes. Triple-authored Israeli graduation film, writer/director/cinematographer all Mya Kaplan. The cohesion of single-vision authorship usually shows, for better or worse. The subject — discovery of troubling circumstances behind an encounter — is fraught and the framing is careful.
A graduation work of exceptional formal coherence, selected for the Cinéfondation at Cannes 2021 for its disciplined handling of a subject — female agency in the aftermath of coercion — that most student films approach without sufficient rigor.
Mya Kaplan wrote, directed, AND shot it — that triple-authorship for a 25-minute student film usually produces either a mess or a singular voice, and the synopsis suggests the latter. Curious about the visual grammar of a story this delicate from someone holding the camera too.
Festivals
- Cannes Film Festival — Cinéfondation 2021
- Vilnius International Short Film Festival 2022