Dragoman Films

From the moment of birth, man is timed. For Israelis, time ticks double speed, pursued by a glorious past, an uncertain future and dubious present.

This film is a chance to experience time as you watch it. It is a mosaic of dialogues with a little girl, a psychiatrist, an Olympic swimmer, a news editor, a lifeguard, a stand-up comic, and others.

Four jazz musicians accompany the story of the improvised management of time since the unplanned birth of the Israeli state. It's about time in a country in which the ticking of uncertainty threatens adults and challenges youth. Yet in this land of compelling diversity, everyone without exception marches to the beat of time, from the day they are born till the day they die.

This is a very human story about people, wondering if they have used time to its fullest, or if they could have dome it any other way.

Have you got the time to see this film?

THE BOSTON GLOBE
"A deliciously head-spinning hour-long dissertation on the ways Israelis perceive time's flux, set to a percolating jazz score."     

 VILLAGE VOICE
"An engaging doc about the strange tempo of a culture that's part First World and part Third World…Using odd juxtapositions of interviews and archival footage, directors Ayelet Menahemi and EIlona Ariel manage to capture something of Israel's frenetic and fragmentary reality, where messianic prophets share spaces at cafés with high-tech executives, wars mark the beginning and end of epochs, and time is punctuated by constant news broadcasts."  

VARIETY
"From zippy credits and slick editing to its cool jazz score, pic ticks along with near perfection."   

KAY ARMATAGE, TORONTO INT. FF
"This stunning film uses an inventive post modern structure, and extraordinarily tight editing, to open out a narrowly national question into the universal realm of philosophy. And along with everything else, it's a laugh a minute." 

WASHINGTON JEWISH WEEK
"This film provides an honest and penetrating look at the Jewish state at the beginning of the 21st century. It may be the best documentary of its kind that I have ever seen."                                                    

THE PALM BEACH POST
"Surprisingly thoughtful…a documentary about temporal relativity that would bring a wry smile to Albert Einstein."  

JURY'S VERDICT - Best Documentary Award Jerusalem Film Festival   
"A superbly crafted cinematic essay, realized with great humor and intelligence…a delightful celebration of insight, humanity, and universal relevance." 

JURY'S VERDICT - Best Documentary Film, JAPAN PRIZE
"It is rare to see a program that can delight, provoke, cause to question, and entertain in such an original way. The fact that it deals with one of the most abstract and intractable notions makes it all the more worthy of this prize. This is a program that truly is ahead of its time - as well as being all about time . "

Grand Prix and the Govenor of Tokyo Prize for Best Documentary, NHK JAPAN PRIZE 2002
Best Documentary & Best Script, Jerusalme International Film Festival 2001