Ruben Amar

Ruben Amar
Ruben Amar in 2013
Occupation	Film director, Screenwriter & Producer

Ruben Amar is a French multi-award movie screenwriter, director and producer. He is best known for the independent feature film Swim Little Fish Swim and his two last short films Checkpoint and A Girl Like You With a Boy Like Me.

After attending business school and spending a few years within flourishing digital startups and television production companies,^[1] Ruben quickly returned to his first love: the cinema. This leads him to attend intensive filmmaking workshops in London.

Between 2007 and 2011, he directed several short films,^[2] shot in Paris, London, New York and on the Israeli-Palestinian border. These films appeared in more than 300 international festivals including Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam and South by Southwest (SXSW).^[3]

Checkpoint

Checkpoint, one of his last short film has premiered at Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival^[4] in 2011 where it won the Youth Critic Award.^[5] The film tells the story of Suleiman, a young Palestinian boy living in the Gaza Strip who accompanies his father on monthly visits to the ruins of a destroyed village. Though Suleiman doesn’t understand his father’s ritual, he feels he has a duty to help him.^[6]

Checkpoint has been then exhibited worldwide in more than 100 international film festivals and have earned a long list of awards and screenings at prestigious festivals including like Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival,^[4] Slamdance,^[7] Palm Springs International Film Festival,^[8] Raindance,^[6] Festival du cinéma méditerranéen de Montpellier.^[9] Checkpoint has been also broadcast by many international TV channels (TPS, BeTV,^[10] Canal+ Poland, RTBF^[11]).

Critical reception

• "Checkpoint evokes one of the most striking and thought-provoking messages in a very accurate cinematographic manner. This very local story is conceived in an universal cinematic language evoked by the expressiveness of the actors captured in exquisite close ups, by the wisely-used music, by the subtle attention for details and by the editing innovative solutions. It is undoubtedly an emotionally enriching story which touches our hearts and which challenges our values and opinions, our inner-selves." MedFilm Festival^[12]
• "The shots are often from the boy’s perspective, asking the audience to take in the basic emotional elements of the scene outside of their political and historical context." - Daily News Egypt^[13]
• "The film is exciting both narratively and visually, 18 minutes is just not a long enough time to be spent in the company of this story." - The Huffington Post^[14]
• "It is a movie, not about tragedy, but about contradictions and ambiguity, about hope and disappointment, about the courage to take risks. All of this is more mundane than great tragedy, but also more realistic. There is no feeling of satisfaction at the end of the film, only the feeling that we have seen some good and some bad in the lives of ordinary people." - The Journal of Religion and Film^[15]
• "This is a film about transition, no middle, no end, just incidents, repercussions...this is subtle work." - Eye For Film^[16]
• "Checkpoint showcases an interesting merge of cultural, political and ritual system of behavior that is definitely a must see. Beautifully shot and highly engaging talking visuals, script and cast."^[17] - Brofessional Review

Swim Little Fish Swim

A year later, following the success of Checkpoint, Ruben Amar started co-writing, co-directing and co-producing with Lola Bessis what will become their first feature film: Swim Little Fish Swim.

Swim Little Fish Swim focuses on the domestic life of Leeward (Dustin Guy Defa) and Mary (Brooke Bloom), a young married couple at a crossroads. Mary is a hardworking nurse determined to turn the couple’s lives around while Leeward is a struggling marginal musician who fancies himself a misunderstood artist and New Age visionary. The two can’t even agree on what to name their three-year-old daughter. Enter Lilas (Lola Bessis), a 19-year-old French artist trying to make it in New York and escape the shadow of her famous painter mother. When the bubbly young woman moves into the couple’s tiny Chinatown apartment, their already fragile balance is upset even further.^[18]

This film was shot in New York on a shoe-string budget. Once finished, it quickly became a festival hit (Rotterdam;^[19] São Paulo;^[20] Jerusalem;^[21] Durban;^[22] CPH:PIX^[23]) after premiering at South By South West (SXSW) in 2013.^[24] Swim Little Fish Swim enjoyed a worldwide theatrical release and extensive media coverage in France^[25] and in the US^[26] and it has recently been sold to HBO Europe, Netflix,^[27] RTBF^[28] and OCS^[29] among other international networks.

Style and influences

"Inspired by New York filmmakers Jim Jarmusch, John Cassavetes and Spike Lee, and by their own experiences of the city, French filmmakers Ruben Amar and Lola Bessis have crafted a delightfully engrossing domestic drama for their feature debut." (Northwest Film Forum)^[30]"There are precedents for this kind of illusion-shattering realism - the film shares with Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World the need to prove how much damage some sense of ‘integrity’ can inflict on other people, and even with The Catcher in the Rye the reminder that one person’s view of the world rarely coheres completely with the real thing. And in the constant hardships, disappointments, failures and dead-ends it deals out to its characters, who stick to their dreams to the point of alienating everyone close to them, it’s not unlike the more recent Inside Llewyn Davis, which also rendered artistic practice as a kind of masochism." (MTV)^[31] Swim Little Fish Swim is also "inspired by the Nouvelle Vague’s observations of human beings and Jacques Demy’s charming atmosphere."^[32] (The Red List)

"Swim Little Fish Swim has also echoes of Once, Lena Dunham’s Tiny Furniture and John Cassavetes’ Shadows. The result is a fresh, modern take on New York City’s vibrant world through the eyes of two talented emerging filmmakers." (SFJFF)^[33]

Critical reception

• "Delicate. suggests Tiny Furniture with a french twist. persistently charming." - Indiewire^[34]
• “Gamine-like Bessis has a natural screen presence." - The Hollywood Reporter^[35]
• “An elegance of construction scarcely seen in like-minded indie comedies." - MTV^[31]
• "Swim Little Fish Swim brilliantly tackles many internal issues without ever feeling preachy neither biting more than it can chew."^[36] Christopher Clemente
• "Lola Bessis does everything charmingly, in that ooh-la-la way." - Variety^[37]
• "Featuring gorgeous photography, solid performances and an absolutely killer soundtrack."^[38] - CriterionCast
• "The intimately observational perspective and the wandering randomness of the scenarios lends the film a naturalistic-yet-surrealist vibe. Bessis and Amar develop a unique cinematic language that is both gorgeously stylistic and intensely dramatic. This strange, hyper-real view of the city makes Swim Little Fish Swim one of those special little films that is utterly impossible not to fall in love with."^[39] - Smells Like Screen Spirit
• "What comes through strongest is its Woody Allen-esque treatment of Brooklyn, complete with golden light, beautiful young women, glamorous locations and plenty of appealingly tortured—or insufferably neurotic, depending on your point of view—artists."^[40] - Slant Magazine
• "Refreshingly free of cliches."^[35] - The Hollywood Reporter
• "What makes Swim Little Fish Swim worth paying attention to is in how vibrant the film is when it basically deals with people in various states of melancholy."^[41] - ScreenAnarchy
• "Finely observed comedy."^[42] - The Moveable Fest
• "What makes Swim Little Fish Swim so unique are the interactions the directors had with their actors even before the cameras started rolling. It provides insights, depth into family, art."^[43] - The Cavalier Daily
• "It's like a French film that isn't really a French film"^[44] - Flixist
• "Swim Little Fish Swim’ offers a magical trek through maturation, utilizing a dreamlike ambiance made up of magic tricks and colorful characters."^[45] - Indie NYC
• "Bessis has a natural screen radiance".^[46] The Village Voice
• "It is the dynamic between the central couple where the writing really shines. The brilliance is in the way that they are completely believable despite their vivid differences."^[47] - Edge Media Network
• "Swim Little Fish Swim unfurls into a sensitive and alert exploration of complicated relationship dynamics."^[48] - The Austin Chronicle
• "This adorably morose comedy follows a struggling young film artist trying to stand out from the shadow of her iconic artist mom and a young dad reconciling his artistic integrity with paying bills and responsible parenting. It’s an Amélie-like remix of Girls."^[49] - DigBoston
• "Inspired by John Cassavettes and the Nouvelle Vague’s observations of human beings and Jacques Demy’s charming atmosphere."^[32] The Red List

Ruben Amar is also producing next Nathan Silver’s feature film, Thirst Street^[50] with his new production company PaperMoon Films.^[51]

Filmography

Feature films

• Swim Little Fish Swim (2014) - Writer, Director & Producer
• Thirst Street (2017) - Producer

Short films

• Objet perdu(e) (2007) - Writer, Director & Producer
• Des Mots Silencieux (2007) - Writer, Director & Producer
• L'Absente (2008) - Writer, Director & Producer
• Mauvaise Route (2008) - Writer & Producer
• A Girl Like You With a Boy Like Me (2010) - Writer, Director & Producer
• Checkpoint (2011) - Writer, Director & Producer
• Don't Let the Sun Blast Your Shadow (2011) - Writer, Director & Producer

References

External links

• Ruben Amar at the Internet Movie Database
• Ruben Amar at AlloCiné (French)
• Official Website