“When I was growing up, I would see movies about young people, and I didn’t find myself in them,” said Sharon Angelhart, whose debut feature film, Cuz You’re Ugly, started screening in theaters throughout Israel on Thursday.
The director/screenwriter said that with her movie, she was trying to make a film that “was what I would have wanted to see when I was growing up in Jerusalem and searching for who I was.”
The movie is dark but also very sharp and funny, as it tells the story of Avigail (Riki Reif Sinai), a young soldier who is delighted when her commander recommends her for officer’s training, but who has more than her share of problems. She’s heavy and does not have a boyfriend, while her gorgeous younger sister, Naomi (Or Avinoam), gets a lot of attention and does not know how to deal with it.
There is no one around to help either sister: Their mother (Yael Abecassis) is depressed and spends most of her time in bed, and their father (Yossi Marshek) is busy with his new life and family. When Naomi gets pregnant, her sister is the only one who will help her, but doing so forces Avigail to make choices that jeopardize her own future.
The story of the close, fraught relationship between the sisters and Avigail’s search for a better life brings to mind the phrase “falling through the cracks.” These sisters have grown up on their own, too quickly in some ways, but in others, they are still just kids.
Movie wins awards for acting
While there have been a number of movies about at-risk youth in Israeli cinema in recent years, Cuz You’re Ugly is especially moving and memorable, and the characters and many scenes remained vivid in my mind a full year after I saw the film at its debut at the Jerusalem Film Festival in 2025.
Part of what makes the movie work so well is the natural and appealing performances by the two lead actresses. Sinai won the Best Actress Award at the Jerusalem Film Festival, and Avinoam, who also starred in Dani Rosenberg’s Of Dogs and Men, won the Ophir Award for Best Supporting Actress. Not surprisingly, the movie also took the Ophir Award for Best Casting.
The first movie by most directors is usually autobiographical, and Angelhart said that while the movie was not the story of her life, it deals with issues that are close to her heart.
“I was in conflict with myself, and with my body. All the time, I was trying to understand the world… It was hard for me to be part of any framework, like high school, and out of what I went through, I created the character of Avigail.
“On one hand, she always tries to do well… She wants someone to notice her; on the other, her dealings with authority and order and social hierarchies are complicated, and she gets herself into trouble,” she said.
Avigail finds the army freeing in certain ways. “In the army, it’s the first time that someone sees her as the equal of everyone else. No one knows her story, her family and its troubles, so she can reinvent herself… Her army commander sees something in her that she hasn’t seen in herself.”
But her family problems get in her way, and her complex relationship with her sister comes to the forefront. “They love each other, they hate each other, they are disgusted with each other, they are protective – they’re sisters,” she said.
“There are a lot of laughs between them, but there is also pain. It’s very clear who helps whom and who depends on whom, and as I have grown up, I have seen that there is often this dynamic in families; there are moments that are lots of fun, and suddenly there is this parallel hurt.”
She credits her “brilliant” actresses with bringing this dynamic to life. Sinai was just 22 and Avinoam 18 when they filmed the movie. “They brought a complexity to their roles that surprised me. I was lucky that they are at least 10 years ahead of their ages in maturity, and they brought it to their roles…
“As a director, I [tried to] foster genuine intimacy between them. We would sit and talk about life. We would each talk about our families, about love, about life. You hear lots of funny stories, and say, ‘Yes, that happened to me, too.’”
The goal is to be ‘body neutral’
Angelhart said that she had many issues with her own body image, and noted that she was often asked about the casting of plus-size Sinai in the lead role. “It’s a funny thing that if you have a fat heroine, you have to explain why. If you have a heroine who is the size 38-40, no one asks you why,” she said, explaining that Sinai gave her permission to refer to her as “fat.”
“Your body is like your family; you don’t choose it, but you get used to it, and sometimes you don’t get used to it. I decided to bring a heroine who is full-bodied, and it’s very cinematic; I enjoyed filming her body.
“You can understand when you see her that for a girl like this, everything is more complicated… She is all different things, and she’s not a victim. Often, when you see a heavier actress, she is the best friend of the heroine, or an outcast. She can’t be horny; she can’t go up to guys and flirt with them… But this is the actress, this is her body, and this is who she is.”
For Angelhart, “The goal is not to be ‘body positive.’ It’s to be body neutral.”
Much of the movie was filmed in Jerusalem’s Gilo neighborhood, where the director grew up, and it shows a side of the city rarely seen in films, not the iconic images of the Old City, or the ultra-Orthodox enclaves, but an ordinary neighborhood where poor and rich often live close to each other.
“I always knew my first film would be set in Jerusalem, you know, to go back to the place where you grew up, to film at the shopping mall.
“Gilo is so cinematic; it’s between Beit Jala and Beit Tzafafa, it seems so far from the center of town, but it’s not really,” she said, speaking of her admiration for the Brutalist-style architecture by architects such as Arieh Sharon, which she featured in the movie.
Angelhart said she got into directing by chance. At first, she wanted to be an actress and began attending the Charles Smith Arts High School (better known as Omanuyot) in Jerusalem. “But they kicked me out of the acting track. It was hard. I was full of energy; I had a big mouth. They didn’t know what to do with me, so they put me in the film track. And that’s where I found myself.”
She had always been interested in writing, and at 12 was already at work on what she calls “slice-of-life stories,” like Cuz You’re Ugly, and she went on to study at the Sam Spiegel Film School.
“Cinema is in my nature,” she mused. “I’m glad they kicked me out of the acting track.”
Source:
www.jpost.com
