Summer Nights

Southeast US Premiere

Bedtime, family haircuts, aging, and the stirrings of first love — all are tenderly and humorously explored by six-year-old Alva and his filmmaker father, Ohad Milstein, in this exquisitely beautiful and moving “home movie.” When Alva begins to ask his father difficult questions about the human life span, love, heaven, and the afterlife, Ohad turns to his own father — who raised him under a much more aloof style of parenting — for clarity on some of the answers. Milstein’s breathtaking poetic essay is as much a film about being a father as it is about being a son. A strong sense of wonder vibrates throughout each scene, with artfully composed images of butterfly wings, great rocks and hair falling from scissors replicating a child’s point-of-view, searching for the marvelous detail within the everyday. Summer Nights was awarded First Prize at the DocAviv Film Festival as well as winning Best Documentary at the Israeli Academy Awards (Ophirs).