‘Longing’ Exclusive Clip and Conversation With the Director

Director Savi Gabizon has now made multiple versions of Longing, remaking his Hebrew-language original as an American production. Now, with the film releasing to video on demand, audiences can experience the Richard Gere-led version in a new light.

We spoke with the filmmaker about what made this story one he wanted to tell again. “At the beginning I meant to do it once,” Gabizon said. “But they suggested to me to do it again on a really large scale, because if it’s an American film, the scale is totally different. So I agreed and I wanted to do it again, and it was challenging to do the same film twice. And also, it is with a benefit because you can fix things that you didn’t like at the first or something that didn’t work so good. There is also the culture that changes that and you need to change.”

Gabizon went on to talk about how the two films differ from each other, even though they were both born of the same idea. The reason that the remade film works in a different way for Gabizon is because of the cast. Richard Gere is joined by Diane Kruger to make this version of the film stand out from its predecessor.

“I must tell you that the story, the film is not the same film,” he said. “It’s in a magical way. It’s the same scenes, but it’s not the same film. It was interesting and surprising even for me because it goes to a very emotional place in this film than it was before. I love it and I’m proud of it. And I think the main reason is because of the actors. The main actors took it to a very weighty and moving direction.“

We have an exclusive clip from the film here!

Longing hits video on demand on June 28th.