Wake Up, Grandson

HaMeorer

COUNTRY
Israel
Year
2024
Running Time
93 minutes
Language
Hebrew
Subtitles
English
Director
Renen Schorr Heller

In his final film, the late Renen Schorr Heller (Late Summer Blues)—founder and longtime-director of the influential Sam Spiegel Film School—turns his camera on the 25-year exchange of letters between himself and his deeply religious grandfather Rabbi Avraham Heller, hero of the 1948 Battle of Safed. Their correspondence reveals a generational and ideological rift as Heller begs Renen to forsake filmmaking and devote himself to carrying out his grandfather’s rabbinical legacy. In what Wim Wenders praises as a “crash course in Israeli history”, the film captures a pivotal moment in Israeli society as it shifts from old world traditions to secular modernism, with Schorr becoming one of the defining figures of his era.

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