SYNOPSIS
“Tied Hands” tells the story of a sensitive and complex relationship between a mother and her ailing son.
Like in Hans Christian Anderson’s legend “The Loveliest Rose in the World” where a child is looking for a rose to save his mother the queen on her death bed, so in “TIED HANDS” in a reversal of roles a mother goes out on a desperate search for a little Marijuana, to ease her son’s pain.
In her, turbulent, journey in the streets of Tel-Aviv, old truths from her past come back to life and threaten to break down a wall of denials behind which, she’s been hiding all her life.
AWARDS
2006 Presented at the Jerusalem International Film Festival where it's star, Gila Almagor wins a "Special Jury" Prize.
2006 Best Feature Film and Best Performance in a feature film (Gila Almagor) at The Palm Beach International Film Festival.
REVIEWS
Gila Almagor gives an outstanding performance as a middle-class woman grappling with a world she has never previously encountered, from gay clubs to outside cruising to petty criminals and hustlers. A film which resonates in the memory.
TIED HANDS. This Israeli film by Dan Wolman, featured at the Israeli Film Festival last year, and was one of the most popular films at that festival for its emotional power and attitude towards acceptance and tolerance. Veteran Israeli actress Gila Almagor plays the mother of a gay son who is dying of AIDS. As she tries to come to terms with his life choices, including his work as a dancer, she eventually tries anything she can to ameliorate his painful existence, including finding marijuana to assuage the pain. This journey takes her to the darker aspects of Israeli underground life, leading to her understanding of her son’s life and the more unsavoury aspects of contemporary life from which she has been largely shielded. The film pulls no punches in depicting this story, and is all the more powerful because of that. Ido Tadmore does a remarkable job too in depicting the dying son as both a victim and creator of his own fate. The touching final scenes between mother and son transcend the usual melodramatic catharses endemic to such stories, and indeed are very well directed by Wolman.