Israeli soldiers of an artillery unit gather near the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip, on its Israeli side May 14, 2021. REUTERS/Amir Cohen

Intramovies, an international film distributor based in Italy, has acquired global rights outside of Israel and France for the Hebrew-language drama The Vanishing Soldier by Israeli director Dani Rosenberg, Variety reported on Saturday.

The film is about an 18-year-old Israeli soldier named Shlomo who flees fighting in the Gaza Strip and returns to his girlfriend Shiri in Tel Aviv only to discover that the Israeli defense officials believe he had been kidnapped during the conflict. Shlomi then “no longer hides from the soldiers he believed were chasing after him, but from his own identity, which has become a trap,” according to a synopsis of the film. “In spite of his parents’ pleas that he return to his unit before it’s too late, Shlomi takes a desperate chance on love, with dramatic consequences. This tragic-comic journey, taking place over a period of 24 hours on the hot and humid streets of Tel Aviv, shifts from terror to hope, from romance to nightmare.”

The film stars Ido Tako, Mika Reiss and Israeli singer Efrat Ben Tzur. Rosenberg and Amir Klinger co-wrote the screenplay for Vanishing Soldier, which is Rosenberg’s second feature after The Death of Cinema and My Father Too. The latter film was in the official selection in the 2020 Cannes Film Festival and won the Jerusalem Film Festival’s top prize, Variety reported.

Vanishing Soldier was financed by The Israel Film Fund and produced by Chilik Micheali, Avraham Pirchi and Itamar Pirchi for United Channels Movies (UCM). Intramovies’ Head of Acquisitions Marco Valerio Fusco praised the film in a released statement for taking “the spectator into a kaleidoscope of contrasting emotions” and called it a “breathtaking, existential thriller set in the craziness of the state of war,” according to Variety. The company said in an Instagram post that it is “honored to be working with talented director Dani Rosenberg and UCM on The Vanishing Soldier, a breathtaking, existential thriller.”

The Paris-based Dulac Distribution will release the film in France while Vanishing Soldier will be distributed in Israel by United King Films as part of separate deals that were previously announced, Variety noted.