Israel Prize-winning film director Judd Ne'eman is dead at 84

• Author: HANNAH BROWN
• Published date: 26 September 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

As a filmmaker, he was known for artistic films as well as for hard-hitting political documentaries, many of which dealt with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, such as Paratroopers (1977) and Fellow Travelers (1983). Among a devoted circle of movie lovers, he was considered one of the finest directors in Israel.

In 1989, he made what the few who have seen it consider to be a work of great brilliance, and one that certainly turned out to be prophetic, Streets of Yesterday. It told the fictional story of a right-wing extremist who assassinates a top Israeli government official when he proposes talks with the Palestinians. The film, which was made in English because Ne'eman received international financing for the project, received many scathing reviews from critics who considered it so unrealistic as to be delusional.

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After the killing of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin six years later, it turned out to be tragically ahead of its time. Ne'eman, who was never able to get financing for the film to be made in Hebrew (at first because it was considered so unrealistic as to be marginal, and later because it was seen as uninteresting once such an assassination had actually taken place), stopped making films...