Past Life, Avi Nesher’s new film, concludes a trilogy that began with Turn Left at the End of the World (2004) and The Matchmaker (2010), and centers on the traumas of the holocaust and immigration. This trilogy presents a mirror-image to Nesher’s earlier films, Ha-Lahaka (1978) and Dizengoff 99 (1979), films that drew a seminal portrait of an Israeli Sabra alienated from his past and its underlining trauma.
These three films constitute a journey that begins with growing pains, an initiation story and the nightmarish remembrance of the holocaust that haunts the Jewish and Israeli identity to this day and dictates its existential perception. Past life also signifies a new chapter in the rich cinematic career of Avi Nesher.
