Oded Kotler Movies

In this conventional tale of middle-age angst, Effi Avidar (Chaim Topol) is having second thoughts about his marriage after he has a close brush with heart problems. Rejecting his poetess-wife, he looks back at his previous marriage and feels the dreams he had then are worth salvaging as he makes an effort to leave his materialistic treadmill existence behind. Meanwhile, the Israeli Labor Party is also undergoing a similar internal inspection, as the 1977 elections have just put the rightists in power for the first time. And if that is not enough, Effi is also having trouble trying to leap the generation gap that separates him from his daughter. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

In this crime story, Lord Winchell died in mysterious circumstances. In 1930s Israel (then Palestine), just the fact of his death, let alone the mysterious nature of it, causes a good deal of concern in the Jewish community. He is one of the men who laid the groundwork for the rebirth of the state of Israel, and a journalist's investigations 40 years later makes unexpected waves in the body politic. At the same time, the story contrasts the Eurocentric behavior of these early settlers with the very different attitudes of native-born Israelis. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

The Israeli My Michael is based on a novel by Amos Oz. Michael (Oded Kotler) is a pleasant but plodding geologist. He is married to a lovely young woman (Eirat Lavi), and so far as he is concerned, everything in the garden is lovely. The wife, on the other hand, suffers from terminal boredom, spending her idle hours imagining (in Belle de Jour fashion) that she is being raped by two childhood friends. Director Dan Wolman does such a good job conveying a sense of ennui that the audience is hard put to stay awake. My Michael was originally released as Michael Sheli. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This Israeli-made feature was originally titled Kol Mamzer Melech. Dramatizing an actual event that occurred during the Six-Day War of 1967, the film top-bills Italian actress Pier Angeli, but the central character is a pilot named Ralphi Cohen (played by Oded Kotler). Hoping to bring peace to his country, Cohen takes it upon himself to fly his plane towards Egypt, there to hopefully commiserate with Abdel Nasser. Shot down en route, Cohen finds himself halfway between the Egyptian and Israeli armies; he'd like to get home, but he'd also like to retain the use of his life. Actual footage of the 1967 war is interspersed with several well-choreographed and convincing battles sequences. In some English-speaking markets, this film bore the title Every Bastard a King (a literal translation of the Israeli original). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The Arab-Israeli conflict provides the backdrop for this political drama that tells the story of an American gentile woman who goes to Israel to find the place where her Jewish fiance died during the 1948 conflict. There she meets the dead man's best friend and eventually they fall in love. The man works in a potash factory, but he is also a gun runner for Israel. One day an Arab terrorist ambushes the gun runner. Later the terrorist's father, tired of all the violence, takes the gun runner in. When his son discovers this, he attacks his father's house. During the scuffle, the terrorist is killed and the gun runner wounded. Fortunately, his American love is there to help him heal. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi