Jewish Film Festival...

Walk on Water

Director Eytan Fox (Israel, 2004)


Saturday, March 10, 2007 at 7:30PM
Flavin Family Auditorium,
School of Management, Room 137
UMass Amherst

Free and open to the public;
wheelchair accessible


Walk on Water ("La-lekhet al ha-mayim") is the most popular Israeli film ever shown in the U.S. This thriller about an Israeli intelligence agent assigned to track down an aging Nazi war criminal challenges our beliefs about sexuality, vengeance, and the morality of assassination.

Dialogue is primarily English; some Hebrew and German with English subtitles. 1 hour 45 minutes.

The international cast features...

Israeli superstar Lior Ashkenazi as Eyal, a Mossad agent who, after his wife commits suicide, is given the lackluster assignment of finding and killing a Nazi war criminal. To discover the Nazi's whereabouts, Eyal poses as a tour guide for Axel, who has come to Israel to visit his sister Lia.

German actor Knut Berger plays Axel Himmelman, the Nazi's gay grandson with whom Eyal develops a close friendship—and arguably a sexual relationship. Through Axel, Eyal comes face to face with his own sexuality, as well as his ability to kill in the name of vengeance (for the Holocaust), no matter how justifiable.

German actress Caroline Peters plays Lia Himmelman, who is living on a kibbutz as a means to escape the legacy of her Nazi grandfather—a legacy she abhors and because of which she refuses to speak to her parents. (An interesting sidenote: during an interview on Israeli TV, Peters revealed that her own grandfather was a Nazi, just like her character's grandfather in the film.)

This is Israeli director Eytan Fox's second film addressing the issue of homosexuality and homophobia in Israeli society. His previous film, Yossi & Jagger told the story of two soldiers who fall in love.

During an interview with GaydarRadio.com, Fox was asked: "Lior Ashkenazi confessed to an affair with another man on live television while promoting Walk on Water. What do you think made him do that?"
Fox's answer: "Lior is a huge star in Israel and when the film came out he did two things. In an interview he talked about the time he was a soldier in the Israeli army and the war crimes he committed. He described how Vietnam-like it was and how so many people are walking around with these experiences inside of them that they aren’t able to share. He was comparing what was happening on the West Bank with the Holocaust. To do that in Israel is a no-no and everyone got very upset... But young men who were in the army were happy that he had spoken out and described how all of them have scars from their terrible experiences that they can’t talk about... He also talked about a gay relationship he had. He came to a point where he didn’t want to bulls--t his audience and he wanted to talk about the real issues that the film raises."

Read the entire GaydarRadio.com interview
with director Eytan Fox (June 30, 2005)

Presented by the Office of Jewish Affairs as part of our Jewish Film Festival (March 10-11, 2007), in conjunction with the 2007 Pioneer Valley Jewish Film Festival; and cosponsored by the Center for Student Development; Student Affairs and Campus Life; the Stonewall Center; and Hillel.


For more information...

Info about the film, director, cast (IMDb.com)

Reviews of "Walk on Water" (RottenTomatoes.com)

Pioneer Valley Jewish Film Festival
March 10-31, 2007

"Encounter Point" and "West Bank Story"
...the other films in our Jewish Film Festival at UMass



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