Director’s Notes

I am in my late twenties and over the years I’ve been to dozens of family events in my hometown Dimona, Israel. Such events were a central part of my childhood. My family and I would go to these events as if they were a family hobby. Family events create a human pressure cooker. Someone who already feels insecure will feel more so; someone who is arrogant will become more arrogant; someone who hates will hate more intensely; someone who loves will love more deeply. Everything is extreme and amplified, for better or for worse. This is a pressure cooker that never explodes. But in this film, everything is about to explode. This film will explore the fantasies and nightmares of each of us, and of our families. Family bonds are complex relationships that accompany us from birth to death. I wanted to address this them and our lives as children in our hometown. The place we grew up is a physical and human space that will always be a part of us, no matter how far we run. And my film is about just this: someone who thought she could run away from who she was, but comes back and realizes there is no way out. This is a coming-of-age drama film about someone who has long passed their teenage years. A film about how much our hometown is a part of us, just as Dimona, where I grew up, is a part of me. To return to my hometown, in life and in the film, is to enter a pressure cooker full of residues, family, feelings from the past, familiar smells, and traumas. What will this take out of me? What would it take out of each one of us? I wonder how we will get out of there, you and me.