Tali Shalom-Ezer

Tali Shalom-Ezer is an Israeli queer filmmaker, born in Kfar Saba in 1978, who studied directing at Tel Aviv University's Film and Television Department after initial training in acting. Her early short Surrogate (2008) won Best Film at the Israeli International Women's Film Festival and screened at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, and her debut feature Princess (2014), a psychologically complex film about a mother and child's suffocating relationship, premiered at Sundance. She is also known for My Days of Mercy (2017), her first English-language film, which premiered as a Gala Presentation at the Toronto International Film Festival and starred Elliot Page and Kate Mara as women from opposite sides of the death penalty debate who fall in love -- one of the few mainstream American-adjacent films of that era to center a lesbian relationship with Hollywood-level production values. Shalom-Ezer now teaches directing and acting at Tel Aviv University and has spoken about her own queer identity in relation to her choice of subject matter.