Why it’s the right time for ‘Running on Sand’

You would have to be a crazy optimist to release an Israeli movie in theaters right now, especially a comedy drama, and Adar Shafran, the director of Running on Sand, which opened all over Israel in theaters on Thursday, fits the bill.

But Shafran isn’t really crazy, he’s just an optimist, like the protagonist of Running on Sand, Omari, (Chancela “Sean” Mongoza), who is an Eritrean refugee who is about to be deported after five years of working as a dishwasher in Tel Aviv. But just as he arrives at the airport, about to be put on a flight home, he manages to flee.

Hiding in the airport arrivals hall, he is mistaken for a Nigerian soccer star who is set to arrive and play for Maccabi Netanya and who, luckily for Omari and the audience, doesn’t show.

Omari is dumbstruck when he learns he will be earning a quarter of million shekels and can’t believe the penthouse apartment overlooking the sea he is given by the team’s owner. He has to figure out a way to make it work – he can run fast, but he isn’t much of a soccer player – but he also needs to find his younger brother, who was separated from him on the way to Israel.

He manages to win over the fans and his teammates, as well as Neta (Kim Or Azulay), the owner’s daughter. She discovers his true identity but he convinces her to keep his secret and they begin to fall for each other.

“How can you always be so optimistic?” she asks him.

“The pessimists died in the desert,” he replies, and Shafran repeated this line to me as we met ahead of the film’s opening.

He’s kept busy since the Israel-Gaza war started, first by driving a truck to bring supplies back and forth across the country and then by showing the movie to groups of evacuees from the South. He had just screened it three times in Eilat earlier in the week at hotels where some of those who suffered the worst losses in the October 7 massacre are staying.

“People thanked me afterwards,” he said. “They told me, it’s the first time in weeks we didn’t think about what happened. For them, it was total escapism and they really needed it.”

Where this movie hits

The movie hits the sweet spot between a truly light-hearted comedy and a real drama, with engaging characters you care about and funny situations, but with a strong narrative and a heartfelt message about treating people with respect, no matter where they are from. It also features a wonderful lead performance by Mongoza, who came to Israel about 16 years ago from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Mongoza speaks fluent Hebrew and has the presence and timing of a true movie star. He has appeared in a number of television series, including Asylum City and Malkot, and should have been nominated for an Ophir Award for Best Actor this year – his absence from the list of Best Actor nominees was a shocking omission.

Shafran met him when he was looking for an actor to photograph for a pitch deck, a promotional tool used to raise money to produce movies.

“Once I met Shawn, that was it, I didn’t need to audition anyone else,” he said. “He was perfect.” Wanting to make sure the movie would be authentic, he gave his star the script to read, and it brought Mongoza to tears, which convinced Shafran that “we were on the right track. It was a huge relief that he loved it.”

In addition to Or Azulay, the cast includes Zvika Hadar, Michael Kabya-Aharoni, and Israel Atias.

The stars seemed aligned for Running on Sand to be the big fall comedy hit in Israel. It was slated for an October 26 release and I met Shafran at the awards ceremony of the Haifa International Film Festival, where the film won the award for Best First Feature – it is Shafran’s directorial debut – as well as the Anat Pirchi Award for Best Screenplay, which was written by Yoav Hebel, Sarel Piterman, and Assaf Zelicovich.

I congratulated him at the festive reception, where he was surrounded by well-wishers as cocktails were served on a hotel balcony.

That was the night of October 5. About 36 hours later, the world turned upside down and the movie’s release was the last thing on Shafran’s mind – at first. But after a few weeks, as he traveled the country showing the film to evacuees and movie theaters across the country gradually reopened, he realized that maybe it would make sense to open the movie now.

The subject of the movie was what finally convinced him that it was a movie that people would respond to these days. The trio of screenwriters are friends of his and they got the idea for the  script when they started to notice foreign workers who walked by the place they had coffee in Tel Aviv.

They realized that “we don’t see them, we don’t know who they are,” which led them to start developing a story about a foreign worker. Hebel, Piterman, and Zelicovich told him about their idea and he thought it was terrific and that wanted to produce it. Shafran has had a long career as a very hands-on producer, which dates back to when he was in a rock band and started making videos of their music. Among his credits are the hit comedy, Maktub, and several television series, including Rama Burshtein’s Fire Dance.

As they developed the story, Shafran, a sports fan, thought of adding the soccer-team storyline. He had never directed a movie, but when they had a difficult time finding a director who was the right fit, he realized he wanted to direct the movie himself. He had become so passionate about it that, “I thought whoever was the director, I would drive them crazy.” He told the screenwriters about his decision and “they gave me the chance.”

He is happy now that things worked out this way, he said. He has a lot more stories to tell, about filming during COVID-19, making sure that the details in the soccer games were accurate, and casting an Eritrean actor who actually plays for Hapoel Tel Aviv and is facing deportation, but we had spent so much time talking about the war that it had gotten late.

If there is one thing that he wants people to take away from Running on Sand, it’s that he hopes that those who see it “will want to be better people. Open your eyes and look at the people around you, don’t ignore them. You need to look them in the eyes... I feel a sense of mission, to bring some light, some good to people... You can’t sit and watch news all day.”