Mary Lou

Doused in sequins and charm, this enthralling new miniseries has been called Israel’s answer to Glee—and for good reason. Infectious pop songs and high-energy choreography explode onto the screen between colorful plot twists, hearty doses of high school ennui and candid explorations of LGBT life in contemporary Israel. Acclaimed director Eytan Fox (The Bubble SFJFF 2007, Yossi & Jagger) brings us the story of Meir, a young man searching for his mother, Miriam, who mysteriously abandoned him on his 10th birthday. Meir clings to her memory through their mutual love of theatricality, dress-up and 1970s Israeli pop star Svika Pick, whose portrait hangs above the family mantle. (Pick, who penned the song that launched to stardom Israeli drag queen Dana International at Eurovision 1998, appears as himself and provides the series’ sugary soundtrack.) Convinced that Miriam fled to Tel Aviv to become Pick’s backup singer, Meir heads for the big city, leaving behind a love triangle involving a hunky basketball player and his BFF, Shuli. In the city Meir befriends Ori, an Israeli Idol contestant who moonlights in drag as Miss Sunshine. Soon Meir, slathered in rhinestones, emerges from his cocoon as Mary Lou and becomes one of Tel Aviv’s most celebrated drag queens. Winner of an Israeli Emmy Award for best miniseries in 2010, and shown here in one fabulous screening.

Eytan Fox was born in New York City and came to Israel as a child. He grew up in Jerusalem and after serving in the Army, studied in Tel Aviv University's school of Film and Television. His first film Time Off, a 50-minute drame about sexual identity in the Israeli Army (SF JFF), won 1990 Movie of the Year award from the Israeli Film Institute and many international prizes, among them First prize in Munich's International Student Film Festival. His first feature film Song of the Siren (SF JFF), a romantic comedy about life in Tel Aviv during the 1991 Gulf War, was Israel's biggest box-office success in 1994. Over the past two years, Fox has created and directed Florentene, a dramatic series for Israeli Television that examines the life of young people in urban Israel against the background of Rabin's assasination. The series won First Prize in the Televiaion category of the 1997 Jerusalem International Film Festival. Eytan Fox is currently working on a script for his first English-speaking film, tentatively entitled 1967.