​​At the 41st Belgrade Film Festival – Fest, the award for best film in the only competition category – Europe outside Europe – went to an Israeli film, Eagles, directed by Dror Sabo. The plaque was received by the Israeli Ambassador to Serbia Yossef Levy on March 3.

Jury of the FEST competition category, dedicated to the films of non-EU countries, consisting of Blagoje Kunovski, Jean Roy and Srdjan Dragojevic, awarded unanimously the Israeli film for “courageous and provocative observation of generation conflict phenomenon in contemporary society”.  This year, nine films from Turkey, Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Serbia, Croatia, Norway, Israel and Armenia were competing for a 2000 euros prize.  

Letter by director Dror Sabo: 

"Thank you Belgrade Festival.
I'm excited and happy with the choice of our film and sorry I could not come to your wonderful city. At least "Eagles" did. And this was my purpose in the first place, that our film will be viewed by as many audiences as possible. When Daphna Levin and I started adapting Yoram Kaniuk's novella to a script, I thought it was a very local story. An Israeli story. But since it started screening in different places around the world, I realized how this story is actually universal. It is the story of the elderly in the modern capitalist, western world. In every city, probably in Belgrade too, you can find the people who were once young and driven with ideals, who felt they were fighting and acting for something greater than them for something valuable. And now they sit lonely, transparent, attacked. And it is not only their problem, this is what Ephraim and Moshka are trying to tell you, that a society that abandons her elderly, that does not want to look back to her past with dignity, loses its right to exist. And also, nobody stays young forever…
Our thanks and appreciation to the jury, the viewers and the Israeli ambassador to Serbia. We hope to be with you with our next film."