In ‘Here We Are’ Nir Bergman addresses the story of an autistic son “through the eyes of a father”

• The story is inspired by the personal experience of the scriptwriter

26/10/2020.- Israeli filmmaker Nir Bergman presented Here we Are at the Official Section of the 65^th Seminci on Monday. Here we Are tells the story of a father, played by Shai Avivi, who has devoted his entire life to taking care of his son Uri (Noam Imber), who has autism. Both characters share a very strong bond between them that, according to Avivi, was formed the very first time the actors met.

“Bergman told me about the project and I loved it from the very beginning. Regarding Noam, the minute we saw each other, we looked straight into each other’s eyes and the heart did the rest. It didn’t take anything else, we felt an instant connection,” said the actor.

Similarly, Imber also said they bonded right away. “The minute we saw each other, I knew exactly how to play my character without any trouble,” he explained. He also said that he had grown up surrounded by people like Uri and was familiar with that kind of environment, so getting ideas for how to go about his role was not much of a challenge.

The connection was so deep that even though buses and cabs kept passing by during many outdoor scenes, it seemed as if both of them were held together by a thread, by a rope, so that they were “one in the same environment”, according to Avivi.

The story, as Bergman explained, is inspired by the personal experience of the scriptwriter, whose father takes care of his brother, who has autism. That element is precisely what makes the film different — it is the father that stays by his child’s side and does not want to give him up, even though it is usually mothers that take care of their children.

“That’s what I liked about the script — it was very original and different, it was a subject that had already been addressed, but this time through the eyes of a father instead of a mother,” said the filmmaker. Last spring, Bergman’s film was selected to take part in Cannes and he came very close to going. The festival, however, had to be cancelled in the end due to the coronavirus pandemic.

So, even though having been selected made them feel “proud”, they were left “high and dry”, he joked at the online press conference held this morning. He also said he did hope the film could arrive in Spain next spring. Here we Are has not yet been released in Israel, where the movie theaters have been closed for seven months.