Musician Amir Benayoun will be making his acting debut on the coming-of-age crime drama, Children of the Light.
By HANNAH BROWN‘The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem’ will debut on Yes TV in 2021.(photo credit: NATI LEVI)
New seasons of Fauda and Shtisel will be coming up in 2021, yes studios announced in an online press conference on Monday, and it also previewed several new shows that may turn out to be international hits, too.In the Zoom event, the satellite network and studio touted statistics about their hit series, saying that they hoped 2021 would be “a year with no masks and many new faces.”Shira Haas, one of the stars of Shtisel – who is nominated for an Emmy for her performance in the Netflix series, Unorthodox – made a videotaped appearance, along with her Shtisel co-stars, Doval’e Glickman and Michael Aloni, in which she said that, “There’s a feeling that it’s a family, still” on the set.Yes also announced that, in collaboration with Bezek International and Pelephone, it will donate hundreds of thousands of shekels to television industry workers to help them get through the coronavirus crisis, through a partnership with Shaham; the actors’ union and Act, the Israel Association of Cinema and Television Professionals. These funds will be distributed before the start of the Rosh Hashanah holiday.One of the highest profile productions among the new offerings will be The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem. It’s a big-budget period drama, adapted from Sarit Yishai-Levy’s bestselling novel of the same name about the a family that lives through the Ottoman Empire, the British Mandate and the War of Independence in Jerusalem, with dialogue in Hebrew, English, Ladino and Arabic. The young actress, Swell Ariel Or, who plays the key role of Luna, is being touted as the next big Israeli star; and it also stars Michael Aloni of Shtisel, Yuval Scharf of McMafia and Itzik Cohen of Fauda.Another drama that features several of Israel’s most popular actors is Embezzlement, a fact-based series about Eti Alon, a bank clerk who started out embezzling money to pay her brother’s gambling debts and ending up stealing more than NIS 250 million. Dana Ivgy (Zero Motivation) plays Alon and Yehuda Levi (Yossi & Jagger, Mossad 101) is her brother.Since cooking shows are so popular these days, it makes sense that there would be a drama about the inner workings of a celebrity chef-owned restaurant, and The Chef stars Ninja Israel host Rotem Sela, State of the Nation star Guri Alfi and Gal Toren of Sisters.Musician Amir Benayoun will be making his acting debut on the coming-of-age crime drama, Children of the Light, that is set among drug dealers in Beersheba 20 years ago.Why? Who Died?, a series about a stand-up comedian diagnosed with cancer who falls in love with another cancer patient, will star Kuti Sabag and Lihi Kornowski, who was recently seen in the series, Losing Alice.There will be a number of returning docu-reality shows, including The Bouzaglos, about the first family of Israeli soccer, as well as Yes Men and The Secret Lives of Four-Year-Olds.Yes has consistently been a leader in the documentary field and there will be a number of new documentaries, including one about singer Ahuva Ozeri.
