Japan<\/a> gags. In the first film, they tried to pay Shuli\u2019s ransom through the popular-in-Israel app Bit, and in this one, which was filmed well into the current war, they remind each other not to show off their Israeli identity on a crowded Japanese street, although each has either a star of David necklace, an Israeli flag, or an IDF logo on his back.<\/p>\nOne big surprise for viewers will be the appearance of a young female Japanese character, Batsheva, who is also searching for Shuli and who guides them on their way. She is played, to great comic effect, by the international model Emma Medding, the daughter of a Japanese mother and an Australian father, who grew up in Israel.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t believe in acting; I believe in casting, and I thought it was a very good casting decision to bring her along,\u201d said Bachar.<\/p>\n
With her nasal voice, slangy Hebrew, and deadpan delivery, coupled with her willowy Japanese silhouette, she often steals the show from the guys. Medding grew up speaking Hebrew, Japanese, and English, and in a recent interview with Reshet, she spoke about how on October 7, 2023, although she was modeling abroad, she headed home as soon as possible to report for IDF reserve duty.<\/p>\n
The movie was shot in just 17 days in Japan. Bachar, who spent years directing sketches on Eretz Nehederet, the television comedy show that is Israel\u2019s version of Saturday Night Live, said he began working with the trio 25 years ago. \u201cSo I knew just what they can do.\u201d He was able to keep up the pace thanks to his television training, as well as his work directing commercials and an early job editing news clips. He also directed the 2016 comedy The Last Band in Lebanon, about an army music group left behind in Lebanon when the IDF pulled out in 2000, which is kidnapped by drug-dealing Hezbollah fighters.<\/p>\n
The making of a comedy film<\/h3>\n
\u201cI know how to keep up a quick tempo, you know, you just don\u2019t stop. People said, \u2018How can you make a movie out of the trio? It will be just one long sketch.\u2019 But the movie is a mix of genres, it\u2019s like drama and comedy and action together… It\u2019s a balance that is helpful to the audience, too, because it\u2019s hard to laugh all the time. You laugh for a bit, and then there\u2019s some drama, and you can sit back, and then later you laugh again. It\u2019s less than 90 minutes but we get a lot of story in,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He credits Saving Shuli-San\u2019s screenwriter, Ori Katz, with perfecting the mix of genres. \u201cOri is also a chef,\u201d he said, explaining that Katz came up with the ideas for the hybrid Yemenite-Japanese cuisine Shauli prepares in the movie.<\/p>\n
Asked if he agreed with the Hollywood phrase, \u201cDying is easy, comedy is hard,\u201d he laughed. \u201cI think comedy is very hard to make, to make you feel emotion, like sadness, that\u2019s easier… But the main thing is we had a great ensemble, and so we have something special in the movie.\u201d<\/p>\n
He worked with a stunt director on some martial arts sequences. \u201cI love Tarantino, so many scenes were like playing with Kill Bill,\u201d said Bachar.<\/p>\n
Bachar feels that the Japanese-Israeli divide is at the heart of the film\u2019s appeal. \u201cI think there\u2019s something universal about connecting different cultures. This culture clash is interesting for everyone. I don\u2019t think there are any cultures more different than Israel and Japan. They\u2019re opposite extremes. The trio is very wild, very fast. Nothing is politically correct… Even without knowing any language, you can just get it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bachar said his team was currently working on a version of the movie with Japanese subtitles and preparing to release the movie there, including screening it for Japanese focus groups, to see what jokes work and which need some tweaking.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe worked with a local Japanese crew, and they really went crazy over the movie. They enjoyed the story,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a very childlike side to Japanese culture, and they really enjoy broad comedy. They liked the slapstick and the characters. Although they didn\u2019t get everything, they were really interested in it. They asked a lot of questions. Who knows? Maybe it will also be a success in Japan.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FROM LEFT, Ben Bachar, the film\u2019s director, with actors Shalom Michaelshwilli and Avi Israelof, producer Moshe Edery, and actors Tzion Baruch and Emma Medding, as they toast \u2018Saving Shuli-San\u2019s millionth ticket sale. (photo credit: RAFI DELOYA) Saving Shuli-San was set for a June release, but the war with Iran made United King Films, the movie\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1963367,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[346532,346531,346535,346533,346536,346534],"class_list":["post-1963366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-ben-bachar","tag-comedy-film","tag-emma-medding","tag-saving-shuli","tag-tzion-baruch","tag-united-king-films"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/How-an-Israeli-kidnapping-comedy-sold-a-million-tickets.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1963366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1963366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1963366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1963367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1963366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1963366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1963366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}