HANNAH BROWN | 12.31.2010 | The Jerusalem Post

2010 was a banner year for both high art and low comedy in the Israeli movie industry.

Israel got its third Oscar nomination in a row – for Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani’s Ajami – but ended up losing to the Argentinean film The Secret in Their Eyes.

But it’s a testament to the health of the movie industry here that this Oscar nod wasn’t the big story this year. That distinction belonged to a comedy called This Is Sodom (Zohi Sdome), starring and written by the same cast and crew that brings you Eretz Nehederet (Wonderful Country). Muli Segev and Adam Sanderson directed this broad look at the Sodom story, with God as a briefcase-carrying traveling salesman who makes a deal with Abraham to save his cousin Lot. With jokes about shatnes (the linen-wool blend forbidden in the Bible), it’s not likely to draw a lot of viewers abroad, but Israeli audiences indulged wildly in Sodom – it broke local box-office records. After a single month, the film had sold 450,000 tickets, a huge number in a country this size (and one where more than a million residents either don’t speak Hebrew as a first language or are too religious to go to the movies – or both).

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