About the film

Anat, played with raw and "paranoid" intensity by the legendary Dana Ivgy, is a single mother in Haifa whose entire world revolves around her son, Ido. She has spent months counting the minutes until his military discharge, but her relief is shattered when a new conflict erupts on the northern border. As the country shifts into a state of emergency—a reality all too familiar to Israeli audiences today—Ido delivers a blow Anat never expected: he has lied to her, volunteering to stay and fight rather than coming home.
In a breakout performance, Ben Sultan captures the quiet, heartbreaking struggle of a young man torn between his mother’s overwhelming love and his own sense of duty to his unit. As Anat begins a frantic, obsessive mission to "save" her son from the front lines, the electric chemistry between Ivgy and Sultan turns a mother’s protective instinct into a high-stakes psychological thriller. Oxygen dives into the heart of the "unspoken taboo" in modern Israel: the clash between a parent’s desperate need to keep their child safe and a society’s demand for sacrifice. It is a hauntingly relevant story about the boundaries of love and the high price of "doing what is right" in a land under fire.

The Israeli feature Oxygen is directed by Netalie Braun, a poet, filmmaker and former artistic director of the Israeli Women’s Film Festival. She’s also a senior lecturer and head of the MFA programme at Tel Aviv University’s Steve Tisch School of Film & Television, known for socially resonant storytelling. The film stars Dana Ivgy as Anat, portraying a mother’s emotional journey amid war and family pressures with great depth and nuance.