Renowned architect Ada Karmi-Melamede balanced family life and major projects in 1970s NYC before leaving to design Israel's Supreme Court. Her daughter's film explores their relationship and career-motherhood tensions.
Ada is one of the most accomplished female architects in the world, but very little is known about her outside her home country of Israel. This is a deeply moving portrait of an extraordinary woman directed by her daughter, filmmaker and former architect, Yael Melamede. Despite personal sacrifices, Ada's work gave physical form to some of Israel's highest democratic ideals, most notably in the acclaimed Supreme Court building in Jerusalem, the Open University and Ben Gurion airport. The film also peeks into a family split which corresponds to a split within Israel itself: Karmi-Melamede is clearly downcast by the Netanyahu government’s move three years ago to lessen the power of the supreme court. When Yael asks Ada about architecture, her mother is spellbindingly eloquent, even poetic. You may never walk through a building the same way again after you hear Ada describe what she hopes to achieve as people see, walk through, live and work in what she creates. (Some subtitles)
USA/Israel 2024 Yael Melamede 81m
