Cannon Fodder director cooks up kibbutz horror

Genre specialist Eitan Gafny, director of one of Israel’s first zombie films Cannon Fodder, is gearing up to shoot a horror picture set on a kibbutz in northern Israel on the eve of the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

“It’s a cross-genre film inspired by some of the biggest US horror films of the 1970s, like Halloween and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre… some people might see it as a slasher film, others as a psychological thriller. And it’s also got a huge social commentary in it… it’s half drama, half horror film,” says Gafny.

The film, entitled Children on the Fall, revolves around young American woman, Rachel Strode, who is working as a volunteer on a kibbutz in the lead-up to the war, in which Syria and Egypt launched a surprise attack on Israel on the holiest day in Judaism.

She is surprised to be treated with suspicion by the local kibbutz members who do not seem to like strangers. On the night of Yom Kippur, the holiday celebrations take a menacing and bloody turn and Rachel has to fight for her life.

Gafny is producing the film, due to shoot in September, through White Beach Productions, the company he set up with wife and actress Yafit Shalev and cinematographer Tom Goldwasser. Yoram Globus’s Globus Group Films is also attached to the project.

International sales on Gafny’s debut feature Cannon Fodder were picked up by New York-based Screen Media, which re-packaged the film under the title of Battle of the Undead.

“After Cannon Fodder, which got picked up in a number of territories including the UK, the US, Germany, Russia and South Korea, we understood that there is a market for Israeli genre films,” said Gafny.

“Children of the Fall is the film we always wanted to do. It’s a bigger film in terms of budget, content, production value and its aesthetic,” said Gafny.

The director will present the project at the Israeli feature-focused Pitch Point event at the Jerusalem Film Festival on Monday.