Special Fashion Event: A Lecture by Tal Nahum and a Screening of Competitors – Herzliya Cinematheque

Thursday | 15 October | 19:00 | Herzliya Cinematheque

Director: Luca Guadagnino
Cast: Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, Mike Faist
(131 min, English; Hebrew subtitles)

Challengers

Three tennis players—a young woman and two young men who first met as teenagers—meet again on the court, where the sporting competition is joined by another, no less charged romantic contest.

A look at Luca Guadagnino’s filmography (“I Am Love,” “Call Me by Your Name”) reveals a fascinating filmmaker whose films differ greatly in style, yet frequently engage in dialogue with earlier works of canonical status. In Challengers, Guadagnino echoes Bernardo Bertolucci’s sensual films, especially The Dreamers. Here too, three young actors surrender to a relationship charged with passion, competition, and jealousy, displaying dizzying chemistry.

The exhilarating score was composed by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Alongside it, the virtuoso cinematography of Sayombhu Mukdeeprom—a Thai cinematographer almost as cool as his name—turns the tennis match into a kinetic experience, at its peak even adopting the ball’s point of view. The result is exhilarating, and not a little dizzying.

About the Lecture

Ahead of the screening of Challengers, we will embark on a journey exploring the close and enduring relationship between the worlds of tennis and fashion. We will examine how the tennis court has, over the years, also become a runway, and how iconic items born from the sport—from Lacoste’s crocodile to Venus and Serena Williams’s unforgettable pleated skirts—have transcended the boundaries of the court to become cultural and fashion symbols.

Through the film, we will also examine the work of Jonathan Anderson, currently Dior’s artistic director, who designed the costumes and uses them to tell a story of passion, competition, power, and status. From the clothes on screen to the film stars’ looks on the red carpet, we will discover how fashion and tennis repeatedly intersect, and how fashion becomes a dominant and inseparable part of the game.