CineFest- Ultimatum
7:30 pm
JCC-Gordon Center for Performing Arts
3506 Gwynbrook Rd
Owings Mills, Md 21117
Wednesday, October 13; 7:30pm France, Israel, Italy 2009 Director: Alain Tasma 120 minutes, English, French, Hebrew with English subtitles The Persian Gulf War and its effect on a French couple living in Israel, their friends and family, forms the matrix of Ultimatum, a tense melodrama adopted from Valérie Zenatti’s 2006 novel. As Jerusalem anxiously awaits the deadline for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait, the threat of a chemical and biological attack paradoxically reawakens the desire of Israeli citizens to laugh, love, live and face reality. When the Scud missiles finally begin to fall, the contentious and repressive relationship of Louisa (Jasmine Trinca), a young French-Italian student, and her boyfriend Nathanaël (Gaspard Ulliel), a French painter, is severely challenged. Handheld cameras track terrified Israeli citizens as they don gas masks and seal themselves in special safe rooms. Ultimatum authentically recreates the eerie wartime mood that consumed Israeli society in January 1991