Split portrait: half of a snarling skinhead's face lit red, half of the same man as a bearded Orthodox Jew

MY WAR

film by Elazar Avramovits

A limited autobiographical drama series
Based on a true story

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A grinning skinhead in a bomber jacket on a grey street
ID photo of a young Hasidic man with side curls and a beard

The Hook

He grew up hating Jews.
Years later, he left everything behind to become one.

Raised in post-communist Hungary amid grief, nationalism and violent antisemitism, Gabriel descends from skinhead ideology into punk culture, drugs and self-destruction — until a near-death experience sends him searching for God and eventually toward Judaism.

Series Overview

My War follows Gabriel, a Hungarian boy shaped by childhood loss, inherited hatred and a collapsing post-communist world.

Each identity he adopts promises salvation:

  • nationalism gives him certainty
  • punk gives him freedom
  • drugs give him escape
  • religion gives him meaning

But none of them erase the person he used to be.

The series asks:

How much of who we are can actually change?

  1. Gabriel as a small boy in star-print braces
    childhood
  2. Gabriel as a teenage skinhead in a green bomber jacket
    skinhead
  3. Gabriel as a punk skater in a school corridor
    punk
  4. Gabriel with long hair during his drug years
    drugs
  5. Gabriel as an Orthodox Jew in a black hat
    judaism

The Hate

Episode 1 — THE HATE

Completed — approx. 10 minutes

Gabriel, now visibly Orthodox, packs his suitcase in Budapest and tells his father he is leaving for Israel to convert to Judaism.

His father tries to stop him, invoking Gabriel’s dead mother:

“I promised your mother I would look after you.”

The sentence opens Gabriel’s past: his mother’s death, post-communist Hungary, inherited antisemitism, skinhead culture and the first acts of violence committed in the name of belonging.

Gabriel, Orthodox, on the phone
Gabriel's mother smiling
Two brothers in a 1990s living room
A skinhead holding a chain, low angle
A skinhead throwing a punch
Gabriel reading Mein Kampf
A skinhead gang marching at night
A mohawked skinhead drinking from a bottle

No Rules

Episode 2 — NO RULES

Completed — approx. 12 minutes

Gabriel leaves rigid skinhead ideology behind and enters a new world: punk music, skateboarding, parties, rebellion and drugs.

At first, this world feels like freedom.

It contains friendship, music, humor and belonging.

But the same freedom slowly becomes another form of escape.

An older man teaching Gabriel guitar
A woman confronting Gabriel
Punk Gabriel with spiked hair
Gabriel embracing a girlfriend in a park
Friends toasting at a house party
A revolver pointed at Gabriel
A young man smoking from foil
Two shirtless skaters in the sun
A skater mid-kickflip
Extreme close-up of a wide, staring eye

Season Arc I: Descent

  1. Episode 3 — BUDAPEST

    Gabriel moves to Budapest to study. Without his father’s discipline, freedom becomes chaos: parties, festivals, daily drug use and dealing drugs at school.

  2. Episode 4 — OUTSIDE MYSELF

    Psychedelic drugs, unstable relationships, police confrontations and an overdose push Gabriel outside his own body. His understanding of reality changes. He begins searching for God.

  3. Episode 5 — EVERYTHING FALLS APART

    Expelled from three student residences, nearly thrown out of school, robbed, paranoid and separated from his closest friend, Gabriel finally abandons drugs.

Gabriel as a Hasidic man, seated, looking over his shoulder

Season Arc II: Transformation

  1. Episode 6 — THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH

    Gabriel discovers the Jewish world around him. Communities reject him, family arguments intensify, and he takes unusual jobs in the Jewish community — including gravedigger and rabbi’s assistant.

  2. Episode 7 — JERUSALEM

    Gabriel leaves for Israel, completes conversion and arrives in Jerusalem with almost no money. He eats in charity kitchens and sleeps on a synagogue bench.

  3. Episode 8 — YESHIVA

    Gabriel finally enters yeshiva, but language, headaches, strict teachers and spiritual instability make the world he longed for almost impossible to survive.

  4. Episode 9 — THE WEDDING

    Gabriel enters a strict Hasidic community, meets his future wife, travels to America to raise money for the wedding, and marries without his parents present.

Gabriel

Gabriel is not one person
He is every person he tried to become

  • A grieving child
  • A teenage antisemite
  • A skinhead
  • A punk
  • A skater
  • A drug dealer
  • A spiritual seeker
  • A convert
  • An immigrant
  • A yeshiva student
  • A husband

They are all the same person.

Two shirtless teenage skaters on a ledge
Skater A battered skateboard shown front, back and side Jewish
Costume tests of Gabriel as a Hasidic man: standing, sitting and leaning
Punk
Punk Gabriel with spiked hair, front
Punk Gabriel with spiked hair, profile
Wardrobe study of skinhead Gabriel: bomber jacket, rolled jeans, Doc Martens

Family and Key Characters

Gabriel's father, grey-bearded

Father

A widower, teacher and contradictory force in Gabriel’s life. He passes antisemitic beliefs to his son, but later fears losing that same son to Judaism and Israel.

Gabriel's mother, 1980s blonde hair

Mother

She dies when Gabriel is five, but her absence shapes the entire story. Her memory binds father and son together even when religion divides them.

Gabriel's brother, buzz-cut

Brother

Gabriel’s closest witness to childhood loss and the person who remembers him before ideology, drugs and faith transformed him.

Kriszta, with spiky red hair, smiling

Kriszta

Gabriel’s girlfriend during his chaotic Budapest years. Their relationship reflects the emotional instability and dependency of that period.

Visual Language

My War combines the gritty, high-contrast underworld aesthetic of Snatch with the warmer, more expressive colour and light of Trainspotting.

Desaturated slate grey, metallic blue and pale green tones, harsh shadows, subtle wide-angle distortion and tactile 35mm grain create a raw, cinematic world.

As Gabriel changes, the visual language changes with him — from rigid and confrontational to chaotic, psychedelic and eventually more restrained and spiritual.

Snatch (2000): men huddled on a sofa
Snatch (2000): a boxer sitting in the ring

Tone references

Trainspotting (1996): a young man smoking in a warm-lit room
Trainspotting (1996) Warm colour palette
Snatch (2000): three men in a dim, green-grey bar
Snatch (2000) gritty and raw, desaturated colour palette of slate grey

Creative Approach

Generative filmmaking as reconstructed memory.

My War combines generative AI, editing, archival material, authentic cultural references, music and traditional post-production.

AI is not the subject of the story.

It is the method that allows Gabriel to reconstruct a past that can no longer be filmed:

  • his childhood
  • his mother
  • vanished places
  • younger versions of real people
  • memories shaped by grief, drugs and time

The artificial image becomes part of the language of memory.

Mother
Archival family photo: Gabriel's mother in a red dress beside a car
Archival portrait of a young woman
AI reconstruction of the mother in her red dressreconstructed
Childhood
Archival photo: two boys at a table
Archival photo: Gabriel as a small boy
AI reconstruction: the two brothers in their living roomreconstructed
Location
Photo of a yellow Hungarian building and square
AI reconstruction: a skater grinding a ledge in the same squarereconstructed
Events
Archival Fortepan photo: May Day parade of pioneers with flags
AI reconstruction of a communist-era May Day paradereconstructed
Skinhead Gabriel holding a heavy chain, shot from below

Why this / Why me / Why now

Why this idea?

Because it happened. The different people Gabriel has been feel almost impossible to reconcile — yet they all belong to the same life.

Why me?

Because I lived it. The antisemite, the punk, the addict, the convert, the immigrant and the husband are not fictional characters. They are all me.

Why now?

We live in a time of identity crisis, radicalisation, antisemitism, nationalism, addiction, migration and spiritual searching.

My War asks whether a person can truly change — and what remains after every identity collapses.

Current status: Episodes 1 and 2 completed. Episodes 3–9 in development / production.

Get in touch

For broadcasters, producers, festivals and press — screeners on request.