Sony Pictures Classics Buys ‘Foxtrot,’ Israel’s Ophir Winner and Oscar Entry

Sony Pictures Classics released Samuel Maoz’s last film “Lebanon” and hung out with the Israeli filmmaker at the recent Telluride and Toronto International Film Festivals, where Venice Grand Jury Prize-winner “Foxtrot,” a moving and humorous exploration of grief and loss, was a rousing success. So it’s no surprise that Sony Pictures Classics has just acquired North American rights to the winner of eight Ophir awards, including Best Picture and Director.

Any film that wins the Ophir is the automatic Israeli entry for the Oscars. With it, SPC adds yet another arrow to its quiver of this year’s foreign-language arsenal, which already includes Chile’s “A Fantastic Woman” (Sebastian Leilo) and likely Russian entry “Loveless” (Andrey Zvyagintsev).

In our review of the film, Eric Kohn wrote that its a “brilliant followup” to Maoz’s previous offering, adding that this feature “deals with a very different kind of confinement — being imprisoned by an ambivalent world, and forced to deal with whatever random tragedies it chooses to dish out. Yet despite its dreary overtones, Maoz pierces his milieu with flashes of perceptive satire, an animated interlude, and a touching, romantic finale, all of which adds up to a wonderfully unexpected hodgepodge of insights into intergenerational Israeli frustrations.”

Check out the film’s trailer below.

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