Gidi Dar and Shuli Rand Reunite After Ushpizin

Dar began as a jazz musician. He said he dropped out of film school after just two months and decided to make a movie on his own. At 22 he directed his first short, "The Poet," which gave Rand his first film role.

He went on to make "Eddie King," an experimental film starring Eitan Blum and Rand, which won a prize at the Locarno festival. Its opening screening at the Haifa festival went very differently.

"Suddenly, after ten minutes, in the dark, 700 people get up and walk out all at once, as one," he recalled. "It looked like there had been a terror attack here. Pressure at the doors, shouting."

Reports of the flop appeared the next day. Dar said the experience led to a personal and professional crisis in which he considered giving up filmmaking.

Years later Rand, who had by then become religious, came to visit Dar. That meeting produced the idea for "Ushpizin," which is based in part on real experiences from Rand's life.

To make the film, Dar began spending time in Jerusalem's chareidi neighborhoods to learn about a world he did not know. When the pair asked to film there, residents met them with suspicion.

The two went to Rabbi Shalom Arush, Rand's rabbi, to ask for his blessing. During the meeting the rabbi asked Dar what he thought of Breslov chassidim. "I told him: I think you're all crazy," Dar recalled. "But I want to add something else. I think the whole world is crazy, and that's fine."

According to Dar, Rabbi Arush burst out laughing and answered: "If that's how you talk, I trust you."

Dar said one of the biggest compliments he received for the film came from the late film critic Uri Klein. Klein approached him after the premiere and told him: "Thank you for letting me love them for an hour and a half."

In "The Badchan," Rand plays a once-successful chassidic badchan, the traditional wedding jester, who has lost his standing because of an addiction to alcohol. When he has to raise $20,000 for his daughter's wedding, he gets a chance to return to the stage.

Dar explained that the film is not only about alcohol addiction. Above all, it is about the hero's craving to make people laugh, to perform and to win the audience's love, even at the cost of hurting those closest to him.

One of the more surprising stories from the production concerns the film's language. The characters were not originally meant to speak Yiddish. During an audition, however, Dar asked two actors to try a scene in Yiddish, and the result persuaded him to change course. Rand had to learn entire monologues in the language.

"Yiddish speakers say he speaks it perfectly. They're sure he grew up speaking it at home," Dar said.

The cast also includes Tal Friedman, Tzufit Grant and Malki Schreiber. Dar said that unlike "Ushpizin," the new film is more critical of the world it portrays, but it was still made out of great love for its characters.

"It was terribly important that the film be fun, especially after the period we went through," he said. "Let's be a little happy. That doesn't mean it isn't a complex film."