Film Sparks Scandal For Look At Family Of Israeli Assassin
Jul 11, 3:39 AM (ET)
By DANIEL ESTRIN
JERUSALEM (AP) — A new documentary has set off an uproar in Israel for its peek into the family life of the country's most reviled prisoner — the man who assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin nearly 20 years ago.
Despite an effort by Israel's culture minister to sideline the film, audiences packed a hall this week for back-to-back screenings of "Beyond the Fear." The film explores the thorny drama of a Moscow-born intellectual who married assassin Yigal Amir after he was sentenced to life in prison and, following a court battle for a conjugal visit, gave birth to their son in 2007.
The late filmmaker Herz Frank, who died two years ago, spent about 10 years following Amir's wife, Larisa Trembovler, receiving unprecedented access to her and their son, Yinon. The film paints a non-judgmental portrait of the family, never directly confronting Trembovler over what her husband did, even as she talks of him as a hero. It documents mesmerizing tape recordings of the bedtime stories Amir tells his young son in telephone conversations from his maximum security cell, stories that, critics say, seem to serve as a lesson that his actions were noble.
Israeli filmmakers tend not to shy away from picking at their society's most festering wounds, but painting an open-minded portrait of Amir's family has long been a no-go zone.
"I do think it really is one of the last remaining taboos," said Shmulik Duvdevani, a scholar of Israeli documentary film at Tel Aviv University.
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