My Kippah, released in 2019, is about an opportunistic thief who sets his sights on stealing a Sefer Torah valued at 100,000 euros, but his plan goes awry when he discovers he is Jewish. With a humorous tone and at times even resorting to the absurd, in 16 minutes it managed to captivate audiences at the Punta del Este Jewish Film Festival, where it won the audience award for best short film—an honor it shared with Razid Season’s short film Kaddish. This edition of the festival took place from February 5 to 9, 2022.
Ilan Rosenfeld holds a bachelor’s degree in Audiovisual Communication from Universidad ORT Uruguay. He lived in Madrid for nearly three years and has been based in Jerusalem for the past two years. He has written and directed several short films, such as *Ir*, in which he already explored existential and philosophical themes. He also directed Olímpicos, a feature-length documentary for which he won the Best Film award at the 2016 Detour Film Festival.
People create books, movies, and all kinds of artistic expressions aimed at different audiences. Generally speaking, a creator wants people to see their work, to engage in dialogue with others, to be able to think alongside others—and the further removed those others are from the creator, the better, because they feel they are understood more broadly.
Raquel, Ilan’s maternal grandmother, “to some extent,” he says, is part of the story of *Mi kipá*. “We’re always part of our own stories,” he says.
“In this case, there are clear biographical elements, and my maternal grandmother is one of them,” although he clarifies that not everything necessarily adds up factually.
“When she was a teenager, she lost her sister; it was a loss that shaped her life and that of all the generations that followed, as if there were a tragic element that lingered with us.”
I think that when you go through a situation like that, you can’t help but ask yourself questions. From that point on, my grandmother posed an existential question—one that’s hard to answer—to someone who was trying to make sense of what had happened to her. In one way or another, everyone in the family had to come to terms with that loss.
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What was it like for you to grapple with that existential question?
I was born into a Jewish family and raised in a Jewish environment with strong ties. However, that wasn't necessarily deeply rooted in religious practice; it was more cultural than religious.
A few years ago, I started taking certain questions more seriously. The short film *Ir*, which we shot with Mutante Cine, was about a group of people who suddenly decided to sit down in the middle of the street to think, because they realized that, perhaps, there was nowhere to go. This led to a traffic jam.
I had this feeling that there was no place where you could open a door and find a revealed truth on the other side.
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And when did you come across that content, after moving to Madrid?
I went to Spain to shoot a documentary about people living outside the system, hoping to find a philosophy in one of those communities that would capture my heart, but I didn’t find it… though I did encounter some interestingly radical ideas, and I appreciated many things. But I never felt that those places were home to me.
Once I was in Madrid, I felt that perhaps it was time to study Torah. Why did this idea come to me? It was something I had never done before. And nowhere else did I find better answers to existential questions than at that study center in Madrid, Kolel Torat Moshé.
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The story told in *My Kippah* is, on the one hand, very personal—truly your own—but on the other hand, it was written in collaboration with Eliav Cohen. What was that process like?
There was a group of young people where I was studying—people who weren’t involved in the film or audiovisual industry, people in their early twenties—and we thought about doing something together. There was an 18- or 20-year-old guy who ended up being the co-writer; he was eager to work and had no experience in film, so we started discussing the idea together—it was really enjoyable—and that’s how the script came about. It was the first film experience for many of those involved, and we paired them with people I worked with in advertising.
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You've already used the device of absurdity, and naturally, it makes you feel comfortable. How do you use humor in your work?
A story is about connection and evoking feelings. Comedy is a coping mechanism—at least for me—for dealing with some of life’s challenges: it’s like saying, “Let’s lighten the load.”
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The award you received was voted on by the public. What does that mean to you?
It’s the best thing that could happen to the short film—and to us. The joy is always greater when the award comes from the audience, because it speaks to that connection with people. And even more so when you’re dealing with something uncomfortable—an uncomfortable topic.
Above all, it makes me happy to think of my grandmother, to think that she’s going to read this note, and I imagine she’ll feel najes—it’s a Hebrew expression, a kind of satisfaction.
What’s more, winning this award is all the more satisfying because I’ve never taken such an ideological approach as I did in this short film. Of course, I’m always deeply invested in the stories I write, but in this case, it wasn’t just about the biographical elements—I also did my absolute best to steer the narrative with the utmost care toward the message we wanted to convey: that there is a place to go.