Live Action Short Nominee ‘White Eye’ to Debut on HBO Max

Tomer Shushan’s White Eye will have its premiere on HBO Max later this month. Filmed in one take, Shushan’s film chronicles one man’s moral struggle after he tries to get his stolen bicycle back. The person who now owns his bike is in a precarious situation and, when the night comes to a close, both men will have their lives changed forever.

White Eye won the Best International Short Fiction Award at the Galway Film Fleadh and is in contention for Best Live Action Short at this year’s Academy Awards. You can read our review of the film and our interview with Shushan.

Please see below for the full press release.

Tomer Shushan’s White Eye has been nominated for a 2021 Academy Award in the “Live Action Short Film” category. The short screened at over 100 film festivals, of which 29 were Oscar-qualifying, has won 20 awards, and was nominated in 2020 for “Best Short Feature Film” at Israel’s Ophir Awards. After winning the top prize at Urbanworld’s 2020 Short Film Narrative competition, it was acquired by WarnerMedia OneFifty for an April premiere on HBO Max. It is now part of the WarnerMedia OneFifty 2021 content slate, along with 40 other projects announced earlier this week.

White Eye has screened at many high-profile film festivals such as Nashville, Palm Springs ShortFest, Flicker’s Rhode Island International Film Festival, Encounters Film Festival, Show Me Shorts. Some of its award wins include the 2020 “Best International Short Fiction Award” at The Galway Film Fleadh and 2020 “Best Short Fiction Award” at Haifa International Film Festival.

The film is directed by Tomer Shushan, Produced by Shira Hochman (MINA Films) and Kobi Mizrahi (KM Productions) with Executive Producers Mark Mitten (Mitten Media) and Jason Perkins. Supported by Makor Fundation for Israeli films.

Director Tomer Shushan is a writer and film director from Israel whose 2017 short film Inside Shells screened at Festival International de Programmes Audiovisuels, in Biarritz, Sao Paulo International Short Film Festival, as well as many others. White Eye is his second short, which went on to win the Oscar-qualifying Award at the 2020 SXSW Film Festival and 2020 Urbanworld Film Festival. Tomer is currently developing an Israeli TV series, Torso, and his first feature film, Between the Sand Grains.

Co-Producer and film editor Shira Hochman has produced several short films including White Eye by Tomer Shushan, Horst by Miki Polonski, and My Little Evie by Hadar Morag. She is developing two feature films – Tomer Shushan’s Between the Sand Grains and Takotsubo by Miki Polonski. As an editor, Shira Hochman worked on a large number of shorts and feature films, leading her to be nominated for the “Best Editing Award” at the 2014 Israeli Academy Awards.

Co-Producer Kobi Mizrahi’s feature The Dive, which he collaborated on with director Yona Rozenkier, won 4 awards including “Best Feature Award” at Jerusalem International Film Festival 2018, won 2 awards at the Locarno International Film Festival 2018; it screened at Toronto International Film Festival, AFI Fest and many others. Kobi also produced Water, an Israeli-Palestinian omnibus project which opened Venice International Film Critics’ Week in 2012, screened in Busan and won the Amnesty International award 2013. Mizrahi is currently working on a few feature films.

White Eye is about a man who accuses a kitchen worker of stealing his bike and unwittingly sets off a chain of events that force him to evaluate the prejudiced lens through which he views the world. This thought-provoking drama shows his struggles to remain human in his attempts to retrieve his stolen bicycle.

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