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Arava is a personal story picked out of my archive of adolescent adventures as a post-religious, bisexual runaway teen who spent her youth hanging out in the punk scene of Jerusalem. The world of characters, the saturated city, and the unapologetic teen spirit of young adults facing distinct challenging realities, is the beating heart behind the project. Jerusalem at its core is a melting pot that brings together many forms of lives on a daily basis. The main characters of Arava are a depiction of this very reality; religion versus faith, untamed individuality versus a collective identity, and the constant, fruitful battle between fantasy and reality. It was crucial for me to develop characters who are, in their very existence, fusions of opposite worlds. Simultaneously, they are characters that deal with coming of age problems and questions that not only people inside of Israel can relate to. The mosaic of Israeli society is far more complex and full of nuance than often depicted in cinema. Although Arava is based on a personal story and set in a very specific world, it is firstly a human story about a young girl in search of belonging, a primal yearning that exists within every human heart.
Country: Israel
Sarah Meital Benjamin is a film director, casting director, and photographer based in Paris. She was born in Israel to a Mizrahi-Ashkenazi family from a Hasidic community that she subsequently left at a young age. Throughout her teens, she spent her time documenting her unique world, capturing the punk scene of ex-religious youth in Jerusalem, her hometown. Sarah’s distinct understanding of adolescent spirit juxtaposed with the shifting world of the early 2000’s in Israel was the lens through which she documented. Her archive of images has since been published and shared in international platforms such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal Magazine, Dazed Magazine, i- D, and more. At the age of eighteen, Sarah moved to New York City where she continued her documentary style work, capturing portraits of NYC’s eclectic youth scene. Unknowingly, these images formed a “street casting” database. Subsequently, her casting agency, Memoria Di, was born– along with an international career as a casting director. After living in New York for the past ten years, Sarah returned to her hometown of Jerusalem to create Arava, a deeply personal story based on true events. Sarah is currently working on her first feature film, also to be set in Jerusalem.
Two runaway teenage girls hitchhike through small-town Israel to a Northern Jewish sanctum in pursuit...
