Grief can make a familiar life feel unbearable, which is why the central figure of Sublet trades New York for a short stay in Tel Aviv.
What is Sublet about?
Directed by Eytan Fox, this 2020 drama follows a gay travel writer for the New York Times who arrives in Tel Aviv still carrying a recent loss, expecting little more than material for an assignment. What he finds instead is a much younger local man, and the pull between them shifts the trip from professional obligation into something far more personal. Fox uses the city itself as a counterweight to the writer's guardedness, letting its noise, heat, and nightlife slowly work on someone who arrived closed off. The film moves at the pace of a short visit rather than a sweeping romance, tracking small exchanges and mismatched expectations between two men from very different generations and very different relationships to home. It premiered at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival before finding its way to wider audiences, arriving as a joint Israeli and American production rather than a film rooted in a single national perspective.
About the cast
John Benjamin Hickey plays the visiting writer opposite Niv Nissim as the younger man he meets, with Lihi Kornowski, Miki Kam, Peter Spears, Tamir Ginsburg, and Gabriel Omri Loukas rounding out the cast that surrounds their week together in Tel Aviv.
Context & significance
Sublet is a 2020 co-production between Israel and the United States, running 89 minutes and mixing comedy, drama, and romance. Eytan Fox has built a career around stories set in and around Tel Aviv, and this film continues that focus, using the city's contemporary, everyday texture rather than a postcard version of it.
Watching Sublet on Ktime
Sublet is available on K-Time with a Farsi dub and Persian subtitles, making its dialogue-heavy, character-driven exchanges easy to follow for Persian-speaking audiences. Watching it requires logging into a free K-Time account, though the page itself can be browsed by anyone.