Love inventory

Tangled web of family relationships as siblings search for lost sister

A funny and bittersweet film, LOVE INVENTORY, chronicles the director David Fisher family’s attempt to solve a personal mystery, but which, in the process, brings a troubled family together. 
As Fisher and his siblings (one sister and three brothers) sift through family papers after the death of their father, a long-buried secret rises to the surface.  Through the years their mother had mentioned that her first children had been twins, a boy and a girl, but that the girl had mysteriously disappeared shortly after birth.  The Fishers knew they had an older brother who had died after only a few months, but were uncertain what to make of the stories about the missing twin.
David Fisher galvanizes the family to begin a search and turns the camera on them all as they begin their journey to find the truth.
After the loss of his parents, Fisher felt that his fantasy of “The Family,” was in reality, turning into an existence of individuals.
Born and raised in Israel, the Fisher brothers were faced with the concerns of families everywhere: the difficulty of parent-child relationships, divorce, job pressures, emotional problems. Fisher hoped the opportunity of the search would be a vehicle to heal the family, and that the process of looking for a lost sibling would bring them closer together.

With revealing moments of grief and humor, Fisher leads his siblings to unlock the past, going back 50 years, when the state of Israel had just been created and unlawful deeds and wrongdoing were part of its own difficult birth pains.  They visit graveyards, pour over decaying volumes of gravesites, death records, and hospital archives, hoping to ferret out information about the lost sister.  In the course of the search, the camera uncovers a unique and intimate but troubled family fighting for its existence.  

The film received critical acclaim. It was screened at international film festivals, broadcast on television networks around the world, released theatrically in Israel and Europe, and is included on the list of required viewing for documentary film studies at the Academy.

A riveting documentary both thematically and technically that renders the lines between fictional and non-fictional cinema almost irrelevant. . . a gem that makes the Israeli cinema proud.

Emanuel Levy, Variety

An emotional and awe-inspiring film… Don’t miss it!!

 Yehuda Stav / film critic

A film that gave the festival its moment of grace… A film that breaks the boundaries between documentary and narrative cinema

From the jury notes, Jerusalem Film Festival  

The best film screened at the Forum, Berlin Film Festival…

Hans-Jürgen Rother / Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany

An intimate, personal film, the making of which requires great courage, about four brothers and one sister who argue, laugh, and cry in front of the camera…

Ingela Brovik / Skånska Dagbladet, Sweden

An amazing achievement in intimate documentary filmmaking…

Barry Davis, Jerusalem Post

A beautiful, personal, revealing, and moving film…

Amir Kaminer / film critic

A gift to the film festival… A moving and delightful story…

Irit Shamgar / film critic

It could become a ratings blockbuster, a story almost too good to be true… Revealing, personal, and moving confessions…

Yair Raveh, film critic

The theme son - The Son of Yossef and Mali / Amnon fisher

AWARDS:

Jerusalem International Film Festival, 2000 – Wolgin Award for Best Documentary Film.

Israeli Academy of Film, 2000 – Best Documentary Film.

FESTIVALS:

Berlin (Forum section), Jerusalem, INPUT Conference, Houston, Munich, Seattle, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Boston, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia and Manila.

BROADCAST:

Channel 8 – Noga Communications

YES Docu

ARTE, as part of Grand Format, France and Germany

PBS, as part of Independent Lens, the U.S. public television network.