Orna Banai breaks down from grief: "I just cried from the inside"
Orna Banai made a sharp emotional U-turn for a new and intriguing project, and shares the personal fear that accompanies her as a mother.
For the general public, Orna Banai is identified primarily with a smile and the ability to make an entire country laugh. However, in the short animated film "Total Darkness," the graduation project of Gilad Amir from the Screen Arts Department at Bezalel, she was required to make a sharp emotional U-turn. Banai plays a mother who lost her son during his military service, while her husband tries to find a double for him.
When asked to enter the recording studio and start the film with crying, without scenery or actors in front of her, the emotion burst out of her quickly:
"I entered the studio and we started talking and I just cried from the inside, such a heartbreaking cry that I felt I was connecting very, very much to this pain of quite a few people who have experienced bereavement."
The connection to the script was immediate and powerful for Banai, who defined it in words as she shared in an interview with Maariv: "The script is a kick to the stomach, it talks about bereavement." She explained that the subject touches on the most painful points of Israeli reality in recent years: "Bereavement is a subject that, unfortunately, we have been feeling in the last three years more intensely."
As someone who lost a brother and a father, and as a mother to her son Amir who only looks from the side at the risks of military service, Banai admits that the great fear surfaced during the work. Regarding the feeling that accompanies parents who have lost their children, she said: "It seems to me something that you can lose your sanity over. This pain. A mother who lost her daughter told me that it hurts with every breath." She added and referred to her personal fear as a mother to an only son, Amir Banai, and says that luckily for her, he did not want to go to combat service.
