Michael Lev-Tov

Farewell to Dough follows Itzik, a bachelor living in Jerusalem above his parents. His days revolve around a simple ritual: a burekas from Musa’s bakery. When dizzy spells lead to an unexpected diagnosis, Itzik is forced to give up carbs. In a city where the sacred and the everyday collide, this small dietary change turns into a life crisis. As he struggles to part with the comfort that has always been there for him, Itzik embarks on an absurd and painful journey that may lead him to love.

This film is a dialectical portrait of Israel’s most utopian endeavour: the kibbutz. In 1952 a French team shot a documentary on Kibbutz Beit Alfa, focusing on the 306 Israeli cinema mythological Sabra and depicting the communal life as heaven on earth. Almost half a century later Lev Tov uses that footage in order to deconstruct the idyllic picture and to examine the contemporary materialistic middle-of-the-road objectives. The narration is executed in ten different languages, from Yiddish to Hungarian, French and Arabic, articulating today’s multi-vocal and pluralistic reality and uncovering the various narratives that shaped the evolution of the kibbutz.