Ronit Yudkevitch as Yehudit in Ruthy Pribar’s “What Is To Come.” Photo: Provided/TIFF

Award-winning Israeli director and writer Ruthy Pribar spoke with The Algemeiner on Monday about her second feature film, “What Is to Come,” a drama about female self-discovery and reinvention that is making its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival this week.

The film stars Ronit Yudkevitch as Yehudit, the timid wife of a farmer who last minute backs out of a suicide pact with her husband. After he dies, Yehuit flees the debt he left behind and heads to the resort city of Eilat for a new life. Yehudit sees the tragedy of her husband’s death as an opportunity to experience freedom and start life again, but this time on her own terms. “What Is to Come” was inspired by a real-life encounter Pribar had several years prior.

“A woman that I met by chance, she asked me if I could take her to her husband’s grave, which she hadn’t visited in a long time,” Pribar explained to The Algemeiner. “Because she didn’t have a car, she needed a ride and there was no way to get there with public transportation. So, I told her, ‘Sure, I’ll take you there.’ I didn’t know her story, I just knew that she was widowed and when we got there by his grave, she told me she was supposed to die with him. They had this pact to die together and at the very last moment, she couldn’t go through with it.”

“Just to hear the way she was talking about it … what drew me most to the story and to her was the fact that she wasn’t talking about this decision as something sad,” Pribar added. “She wasn’t being a victim about it. She spoke mostly about how this gave her a second chance in life … It was more about her appreciating the time that she had, the life that she still had to live, and just being grateful for the opportunity to still have experiences in this world … I was very much taken by her story. And it stayed with me for a very long time.”

“What Is to Come” starts with a loss of life (the death of Yehudit’s husband), but the film is not a story about grief. Viewers see Yehudit grow in terms of her self-discovery, confidence, and independence, even when she finds love again.

Pribar said that only when she started casting for Yehudit, she realized she wanted her main character to be someone who “is a fighter, a survivor, who is looking to find her way out. Not go into the pain, but away from it or open up because of it.”

“What Is to Come” has already won three awards in Israel for its script and is Pribar’s second feature film. Her first, “Asia,” made its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2020 and won three awards, including the Nora Ephron Prize for Pribar, a best actress award for Shira Haas, and best cinematography for Daniella Nowitz. Pribar’s debut feature film also won nine Ophir Awards in Israel and was the country’s entry for the 2021 international Oscar race. Pribar is collaborating with Nowitz again on “What Is to Come,” as well as “Asia” producers Yoav Roeh and Aurit Zamir and Dana Hoegh.

The 2020 Tribeca Film Festival took place online because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but Pribar is returning to Tribeca this year in-person. She said being at the festival now for the world premiere of “What Is to Come” feels like a “full circle moment.”

Pribar said that after seeing the film, she hopes audiences will realize it’s “never too late” to make changes in life.

“There is never the right time to make changes,” she said. “We all want to keep what we have, and we don’t want to let go. Transformation is very scary because we’re so used to things we have in our lives … it’s familiar, and easy and we already know what’s going to happen. [But] when you take a chance and give yourself the opportunity to be surprised by something, then huge things happen. And it’s about being free to make those changes and discover who you want to be.”