More Than I Deserve
More Than I Deserve
Directed By Pini Tavger
Pinchas asks his single mother, Tamara, to join his classmates in training for their Bar Mitzvahs. Tamara, an immigrant from Ukraine, who resists religion, refuses.
When the religious neighbor volunteers to help, the two form a strong bond. Gradually Tamara falls for him too.
Could the idyll hold up?
Biography PINI TAVGER
Pini was born in Jerusalem in 1978 to a couple of Russian immigrants.
In 2008, he graduated the Film and Television Department at Tel Aviv University. During his studies he directed two short films, both shown in many festivals, won prizes, and screened on TV in Israel and Europe.
In 2012 Pini directed “Tipot” that was produced as part of “Water”, an Israeli-Palestinian omnibus of short films that opened the Venice Film Festival. “Tipot” also won First Prize for short films at the Jerusalem Film Festival of that year.
Pini also works as an actor. In 2000 he graduated the “Nisan Nativ Acting Studio” in Tel Aviv. Since then, he has been playing on stage, films, and TV. In addition, he performs his own original music, and recently recorded his debut album.
“Pinhas” is based on his graduation film and is his debut feature film. The script won the best script award of 6th edition of the Jerusalem International Script Lab in 2017.
My script is based on events and characters from my poor hometown neighborhood. After my parents’ divorce, I sought warmth and a found it around the dining room table of the family next door, who immigrated in the 50′ from Morocco.
My film is about the cultural clash, the tension between the religious and the secular, and the search for belonging and identity.
However, more than anything else, my film tells the story of Pinchas, a 12-year-old boy, in search of overcoming loneliness, by rebelling against his heretic mother and choosing to have a Bar-Mitzva against her will.
