In yet another #BDSfail, on October 8th, Iranian-American actor Navid Negahban, who played the role of Abu Nazir in the TV series Homeland, arrived in Israel for the premier of an Israeli movie he is acting in called Baba Joon. This movie won the Ophir Award for best picture.
My wife met him at the premier because she was supposed to be in this movie also. Her feedback on him is that he is a very good guy and loves being in Israel.
Here is a trailer:
Crowned best Israeli film of the year by the Israeli Film Academy and as such, flying the country’s flag at the forthcoming Oscars, Yuval Delshad’s debut feature is by all means a curiosity. Given the enmity between Tehran and Jerusalem, the fact that it is spoken almost entirely in Farsi ensures Baba Joon will receive international attention, before considering its other merits.
While he was here he spent time at Persian-Israeli homes to experience Shabbat in Israel.
https://www.facebook.com/163567591932/videos/10153051893936933/
Here is a pretty funny video clip of Navid with the young Israeli kid who plays the role of his son in the movie. The kid doesn’t understand English and so this funny response happened. Basically he had no idea what Navid said and therefore had no idea what to respond with. 🙂
https://www.facebook.com/163567591932/videos/10153051894016933/
There is also another interesting part of this movie and that is the composer of the music soundtrack. The composer is named Eyal Said Mani, who was born in Tehran as a Sufi Muslim, and learned traditional Persian music from his father. He was literally a child musical prodigy and by 16 he was accepted to study at a music school in Vienna but there was a family secret which he did not know about. Before they went to Vienna, his mother, who was dying on cancer, invited him to come with her to Israel as she was being treated there. On the way there his mother told him that he is actually Jewish because she is Jewish. At first he was shocked and responded that he is a Muslim because his father is a Muslim, until he landed in Israel and fell in love with the place. Read more here.
Eyal Said Mani is now an Orthodox Rabbi living in Ashdod, Israel.
Thats awesome! 🙂
