Omri Bezalel is an Israeli writer, filmmaker, and, producer. He has produced more than a dozen feature films and mini-series in Israel and the United States. Among others, he co-produced Natalie Portman's feature directorial debut, A TALE OF LOVE AND DARKNESS, which premiered at Cannes in 2015—and before that he produced the film JAMIE MARKS IS DEAD, which premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. Most recently, Omri produced COME CLOSER, the winner of the Israeli Academy Award for Best Film and Israel's official submission to the Oscars in Best International Feature.
Omri served as a missile specialist in Israel’s elite Navy SEALs, where he carried out covert operations in enemy territory and fought in the Second Lebanon War. Afterwards, Omri graduated summa cum laude from NYU with degrees in dramatic writing, journalism, and creative writing. His experiences in the military, and the personal challenges they brought, inspire much of his storytelling, particularly his exploration of the human side of war. He delves into similar themes in his debut novel, SILENT WATERS, a work of fiction loosely based on his military service. Visit him at www.OmriBezalel.com to learn more about his work.
About the Director
From Omri Bezalel, writer and director of LISTEN
If you’re drawn to the world of LISTEN—its moral gray zones, impossible choices, and quiet psychological cost—this free mini-book will take you deeper. It's a raw, personal glimpse into my time as a combat soldier in Shayetet 13, equivalent to the US Navy SEALs. These are the experiences that shaped me—and inspired both LISTEN and my novel Silent Waters.
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Director's Statement
Before each mission in the military, we played the “Headlines Game,” guessing what our headline would be in the next morning’s newspaper if we were killed that night. This dark humor helped us cope with being 20-year-old boys-turned-men, tasked with taking sometimes difficult actions to protect the country we love.
Years later, a friend who had served in Unit 8200, the elite intelligence unit that is the subject of this film, shared the unit’s tradition of hanging ironic obituaries of their targets: terrorists who were listened to their death by soldiers with headphones.
I realized it was irrelevant whether you were a 24-year-old Naval Commando or a 19-year-old girl wearing headphones in an office in Tel Aviv. We all need a way to deal with an impossible situation.
We have seen many films about the Commando, but we rarely focus on those who gather the intelligence that allows the lone soldier to go on his missions. In the vein of Zero Dark Thirty and The Lives of Others, this film explores what it does to a soldier’s psyche to intimately know their enemy and his family, and to kill him not with weapons but with brains.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is complex but often simplified into polarizing black and white. This is especially true after the attacks of October 7th. Listen delves into the gray area. How do you weigh lives against one another when the nature of war is that some lives are worth more? In a country where every civilian is at one point a soldier, where do you draw the line between soldier and civilian? How do you protect a country while retaining your humanity, sanity, and even sense of humor? How do you do the right thing, and who decides what the “right” thing is?
Once we’ve decided what’s good and what’s evil, we are dead creatively. Once there’s judgement, there’s no journey. The film tries to avoid both by presenting a situation and characters who do what they think is right. While we may not agree with the characters or their actions, and while their actions may not change our minds about the situation, these characters open us to a different point of view: soldiers aren't ruthless executioners, terrorists aren't emotionless murderers, Palestinians aren't helpless victims, and Israelis aren't stoic occupationists. They are all people in a conflict zone who want the same things people everywhere want—to love, to laugh, to feel safe. And so they do what people everywhere do. Their best.
This film was written in 2016 and shot and edited before the horrendous attacks of October 7th. In a way, the film eerily predicts the attacks. And on the other hand, history repeatedly repeats itself in Israel, which is one of the points made by Dara, the main character. Today, more than ever, it is important for people to see this film.