Orchestra visit

An Egyptian police orchestra arrives in Israel to attend an event marking the opening of an Arab cultural center in Petah Tikva . Due to the confusion and lack of meeting, the musicians decide to get to the venue on their own and mistakenly find themselves in a deserted town with the similar name Beit Hachikwa, where, according to one of the inhabitants, there is “neither Arab culture nor Israeli culture - no culture at all” . Since the return bus to the center is expected only the next morning, the orchestra musicians have to spend the night in a town where the compassionate owner of the cafe, Dina, takes two of them to stand, and determines the rest by the houses of the cafe's regular visitors. Residents and involuntary guests of the city will have an interesting night ...

• Director - Eran Kolirin
• Screenwriter - Eran Kolirin
• Producers - Eilon Rachkovsky, Ehud Blyberg, Yosi Uzrad, Kobe Gal-Radai, Guy Yakoel
• Composer - Habib Schhade
• Operator - Shay Goldman
• Sound Engineers - Gil Thoren, Itay Elohev
• Costumer - Doron Ashkenazi
• Installation - Arik Leibovich

The festival premiere of “Orchestra Visit” took place at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2007. In summer and early autumn, the film was shown at festivals in the Czech Republic, Greece and Canada. In wide hire he went in September in Israel. Non-festival rental in Europe began in October (in the UK in November), in the USA in December of the same year ^[2] .

At the box office, the film raised more than $ 14.5 million, including almost four million in France, where 325 thousand viewers watched it, and three million in the United States, where at the end of March 2008 it went in more than 120 halls simultaneously ^{[3 ]} , in Germany and Switzerland more than a million and almost a million more in Italy and Australia. Hire “Visit of the orchestra” in Israel brought over $ 1.8 million ^[4] .

The film received mostly good reviews from critics. Highest ratings were given to the tape by reviewers of the British cinema journal Empire ^[5] , Chicago Sun-Times and San Francisco Chronicle, and almost equally high by Entertainment Weekly and the New York Post ^[6] .

San Francisco Chronicle columnist David Wiegand notes “dry humor” and a carefully written script, but still calls her characters the main mover of the picture, among which he especially emphasizes the servant of Lt. Col. Taufik Zakharia ( Sason Gabay ), whose cold and impregnable appearance hides a broken heart, and the youngest orchestra musician, Khaled ( Saleh Bakri ), who considers himself irresistible to women and always falls into an uncomfortable position because of this ^[7] . Paul Arendt, a critic of the BBC , also focuses on the work of Gabay: the character of Gabay, he says, looks like a hybrid of Javier Bardem and Charles de Gaulle , whose expression of extremely wounded pride is crowned with a frightening cap. The stoic perception by lieutenant colonel Bakri of the farcical situation in which his orchestra found himself, according to Arendt, brings a tragic note to the comedy. Arendt also speaks well of the sense of humor of Eran Kolirin - screenwriter and director of the picture - and the music accompanying her ^[8] . Village Voice magazine reviewer Scott Fundas particularly notes Dina's performer of the role, Ronit Elkabets , who became known a few years earlier thanks to the film “ Late Wedding ”, and the language problem, around which many humorous episodes revolve (ironically noting that the pidgin , in which Israelis and Egyptians communicate, even native speakers of English understand only with subtitles, but that didn’t prevent the Orchestra’s Visit from being nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film ) ^[9] . The sharp feeling of loneliness that surrounds the main characters of the film and does not pass even during lively conversations and easy flirting is emphasized by New York Times critic Manola Dargis. According to Dargis, Kolirin’s sad comedy contains a symbol of expectation of “the eternal spring of the world” ^[10] .

The film was awarded Ophir (Israeli Academy of Film and Television Prizes) in 8 nominations ^[11] , including:

• for the best Israeli film
• for best directing ( Eran Kolirin )
• for the best script (Eran Kolirin)
• for Best Actress ( Ronit Elkabets )
• for best male lead ( Sason Gabay )
• for Best Supporting Actor ( Saleh Bakri )

The film was nominated for another 5 Ophir awards, including Best Supporting Actress ( Rinat Matatov ) ^[12] .

The Orchestra Visit received two awards from the European Film Academy - for Best European Debut of the Year (Eran Kolirin) and Best Actor (Sason Gabay) - and was nominated for an award for Best Screenplay ^[12] . The Oscar nomination for the best foreign language film was hindered by the fact that in the film, where the Israelis and Egyptians were forced to communicate in the only language accessible to both sides, the proportion of English was too high ^{[7] [9]} . In connection with this decision of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences , press reports and blogs suggested that the “Orchestra Visit” was disqualified due to lobbying by producers of another successful Israeli film project of the same year - the military drama “ Beaufort ” ^[13] . As a result, Beaufort entered the short list of Oscar nominees, but could not win.

“Visit of the orchestra” won the Grand Prix at the following festivals ^[12] :

• Jerusalem International Film Festival (Volgin Prize, 2007)
• Tokyo Film Festival (Tokyo Sakura, 2007)
• Kiev International Film Festival "Youth" ("Scythian Deer", 2007 ^[14] )
• Montreal New Movie Festival (Best Feature Feature Film, 2007)
• Cinemanil (Lino Broca Prize, 2008)

• " Visit of the Orchestra ” (in English) on the Internet Movie Database  
• Visit of the orchestra on the Rotten Tomatoes website  
• Visit of the orchestra on the Metacritic website  
• Orchestra Visit at Box Office Mojo