Aviv wants to celebrate her and her twin sister Stav’s birthday, like they used to - before becoming orphans. Aviv surprises Stav again and again, but Stav is not cooperating and the surprises only make Stav stressed and anxious. Aviv decides to celebrate alone, but then faces the loneliness she’s been repressing. Story of trying to deal with death, and mostly life.
Director Biography - Gal Dulev

Cinematographer and photographer since 2010; Directed four commercials, an AR project for Eretz Israel Museum and a VR interactive project for Kulan non-profit organization; a film teacher in “Tikshoret Mekademet” project.

Director Statement
My amazing parents, parents that every child can only dream of, passed away. My mother when I was 12, and my father 4 years ago. It is weird to write that thy passed away, to understand it in the mind, but not to know it in the heart. I write to you today, on my 25th birthday. The dread of this day fills me every year; the way I am filled with dread towards Passover, or before New Year’s, or every moment that felt real and today feels like an attempt I made to create something real.
“Make a wish” is based on my life. It is personal, sensitive, painful and real. Aviv and Stav are two young sisters that were orphaned of both parents. They are girls who are experiencing adults’ pain; women trying to cope with survival fear; with a loss that they cannot contain. Each one of them is struggling with a pain that seems too big to agree to see. Each one of them is me.
The personal and intimate movie “Make a wish” is a drop of the ocean containing the whole ocean within. This is a story about deprivation, about pain, about triggers – about the day-to-day meaning of being an orphan.
The visual world of the movie is a kind of “main actor” in the movie – through the colourfulness, the lighting, the sound, and mainly through the artistic design, we go through one day, the birthday of the heroines of the movie Aviv and Stav. The space characterizes the heroines, the deprivations, the coping mechanism of each. For example, old blue wallpaper covers the walls in the house. Aviv hangs on it colourfull decorations and birthday posters, paints it in vivid colours, as if trying to cover every bit of memory of her parents and the “heaviness” they left behind them. As Aviv’s loneliness grows stronger, the posters fall throughout the movie, revealing the wallpaper. The lighting that lights the background becomes contrasted. The sound becomes quiet. The ambiance becomes colder. Another example I’ll give, although there are many more important processes I have not mentioned, is that after the opening shot you do not see the parents’ faces. The limits of the frame cut their heads, decorations fell deliberately on them, there is a lighting glair on their faces. This is to emphasize the heavy weight they have left behind them, the major deprivation of the girls, the daily coping.

Gal Dulev
Director

Vered Halutzi
Writer

Zohar Ballas
Producer

Shely Ben-Joseph
Key Cast

Doron Goverman
Key Cast