Leading global content and media producer and distributor Keshet International announces that it is partnering with HOT, Israel’s largest cable company, and United Studios of Israel on new drama Autonomies, to distribute the series globally and launch it at Series Mania. Autonomies has also been selected to compete in the event’s Official Competition next week.

 

A dystopian drama starring some of Israel’s top acting talent, Autonomies is a globally-relevant tale focusing on the burning issues of identity, religion, politics and personal freedom. The story is set in an alternate reality of present day Israel, a nation torn and divided by a wall into the secular “State of Israel”, whose capital is Tel Aviv, and the “Haredi Autonomy” in Jerusalem, run by an ultra-Orthodox religious group.

 

Living in the Autonomy, amongst this uneasy territorial status quo, is Broide, a Haredi wheeler-dealer who makes his living smuggling minor contraband between the two regions. One day he receives a job offer that will change his life: he is asked to kidnap a little girl who is at the heart of a custody battle between two families – one secular and one Haredi – and transfer her from the State of Israel to the Haredi Autonomy. This legal saga, followed by the kidnapping of the child, fuels a dramatic uproar that threatens to tear a fragile country to pieces.

 

Autonomies is also an impossible love story between two characters living on opposite sides of the wall. Dramatically strong and thematic, this affair of the heart has uniqueness and symbolic meaning relating to the overarching discourse – they become their own version of “Bonnie and Clyde”, embarking on the kidnapping of the little girl together.