Footnote 2012

Eliezer Shkolnik, Shlomo Bar-Aba, is a meticulous philologist who dedicates his career to the textual tradition of the Jerusalem Talmud. He and his son Uriel, Lior Ashkenazi, are both professors in the Talmudic Research department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Uriel stands out as a charismatic academic, beloved by students and the public alike, and his rising profile brings him public recognition when he is elected as a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. The contrast between father and son is stark: Eliezer remains stubbornly old-school, a purist in his research methods who is widely seen as unpopular, unrewarded, and trapped in the shadow of a rival scholar, Prof. Yehuda Grossman, who published similar findings just before him. Eliezer’s yearning is simple and aching—he dreams of the prestigious Israel Prize, hoping it will finally validate a lifetime of work that has largely gone unrecognized.

Then a surprising call arrives. Eliezer learns that he has been named this year’s laureate, and the news is poised to alter everything. The next day, Uriel is summoned to an urgent meeting with the Israel Prize committee and is told, to his shock, that the announcement was a mistake: it is he, not his father, who should receive the prize. The committee suggests a path to fix the situation, but Uriel hesitates, knowing that confessing the truth to his father could devastate him. He asks to handle the revelation himself, and in the tense exchange with the committee’s head, Prof. Grossman, Uriel loses his temper momentarily and shoves him. After the outburst, he retreats, intent on delivering the news to his father in person.

Uriel then reveals a painful truth: he has been submitting his father’s name for the Israel Prize every year, and he suspects Grossman of actively stymieing Eliezer’s chances. Grossman counters that Eliezer never published anything of lasting significance, and his only real “claim to fame” is a passing footnote in someone else’s celebrated work. Faced with this imbalance, Uriel agrees to a deal: the Prize will go to Eliezer, but with two conditions—Uriel must draft the committee’s recommendation, and he may never become a candidate himself. The decision weighs heavily on him, yet he accepts.

Meanwhile, Eliezer is interviewed by the newspaper Haaretz about his achievements and, perhaps unintentionally, casts doubt on his son’s methods and contributions. The article unsettles Uriel, who is angry but chooses to keep the secret. He eventually confides the truth to his mother, who remains the quiet keeper of the family secret. The tension intensifies when Eliezer, preparing for a television appearance, notices a rare and telling Talmudic expression in the wording of the committee’s recommendation. He rushes back to his study to scrutinize the phrase, cross-checking its published uses, and slowly realizes that the text appeared to be authored by his son. He reconstructs the earlier phone conversation with the Minister of Education, noticing that she addressed him by his last name, as if speaking to his son, further suggesting that the minister believed she was speaking to Uriel.

On the day of the prize ceremony, Eliezer and his wife make their way to the Jerusalem International Convention Center to prepare for the event. The atmosphere is thick with stress and distraction as the family awaits the moment when the laureates are announced. The film closes on a charged, unresolved note, stepping into the moment just before the official call to the stage.

This portrait, built with careful fidelity to its characters and their rifts, invites readers to weigh recognition, merit, and the costs of intergenerational ambition in an academic world where tradition and innovation collide. The film’s quiet intensity rests as much on the personal dynamics between a father and son as on the public ceremony that could redefine their legacies.