Zero Motivation
| Zero Motivation | |
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Film poster
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| Directed by | Talya Lavie |
| Written by | Talya Lavie |
| Starring | Dana Ivgy |
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Release date
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Running time
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100 minutes |
| Country | Israel |
| Language | Hebrew |
| Box office | $116,044 |
Zero Motivation (Hebrew title: אפס ביחסי אנוש, Zero on interpersonal relations) is a 2014 Israeli comedy-drama film directed by Talya Lavie. The film premiered at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival where it received two awards. It was nominated for twelve Ophir Awards, and won six of them including prizes for writer/director Talya Lavie (although it was not awarded Best Film). It was the most successful Israeli film of 2014, seen by 590,000 people in Israel alone.
Zohar (Dana Ivgy) and Daffi (Nelly Tagar) are two soldiers trying to serve out their mandatory service with the IDF. On their way back to base after the weekend Daffi bumps into a new girl Tehila and, believing that she is her replacement, takes her under her wing. Daffi and Zohar work menial jobs with Daffi being forced to shred paper. After Daffi trains the new girl she goes to her supervisor Rama and explains that after writing letters to everyone she could trying to get a new position in Tel Aviv they have finally sent a replacement. However Tehila is not a replacement at all but has snuck onto the base to see a boy she slept with and fell in love with. After he rejects her she slits her belly and crawls into bed where she is discovered by the other girls in the morning. Daffi is crushed by her death realizing that she will not be replaced after all. However, when she complains to personnel the officer in charge tells her she herself got transferred by applying to be an officer. Daffi then gets a recommendation from Rama and a boy Zohar has a crush on and is transferred away. She and Zohar part on bad terms.
Left alone, Zohar is teased by the other girls for being a virgin. Irena, one of her co-workers, advises her to sleep with a boy as soon as possible. Zohar takes this advice to heart and flirts with a visiting soldier she meets while guarding the arms, setting up a date with him for the following night. Returning to her dorm room, she climbs into her bunk bed and it breaks. After she refuses to sleep in the only spare bed, where Tehila was found dead, Irena lets her sleep in her bed and sleeps in Tehila's old bed, where she hallucinates in the middle of the night that Tehila is there with her.
The following day Irena behaves bizarrely and the girls begin to believe that there is something wrong with her. Zohar offers to take her to the infirmary but instead prepares for her date with the visiting soldier. However Irena insists on coming on the date and behaves strangely the entire time. When Zohar and her date finally manage to be alone, he aggressively strips off her clothes and when she asks him to be gentle, he tells her she should have gone with a non-combatant. She asks him to stop; he ignores her but is stopped by Irena who pulls his rifle on him and humiliates him before finally letting him go. Once Irena and Zohar return to the office, Rama chastizes them for not going to the infirmary. When Zohar explains that she was almost raped and that Irena saved her, Irena claims to have no idea what she's talking about, and Zohar realizes that Tehila's ghost must have left her. Unimpressed, Rama makes Zohar stay in the office all night cleaning. When she returns in the morning she is impressed that the office is spotless but soon finds that Zohar has shredded every record in the department and stuffed them in Rama's office.
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