Douze Points

“Douze points” refers to the highest score available in the Eurovision song competition, the backdrop to this silly, colorful satire complete with endearingly kitsch musical numbers. As French chanteur TJ, a gay Muslim, prepares to represent his country in Israel, he encounters a homophobic terrorist, sensational tabloids and obsessive Mossad agents who threaten to derail his path to fulfillment. Meanwhile, the Mossad, Israel’s famed intelligence agency, gets a goofy sendup here as they disguise themselves as trained stylists, hairdressers and choreographers, all to guarantee the safety of Eurovision. As producer Adar Shafran (Maktub, PSIFF 2018) and his team were preparing their film and miniseries to air in tandem with the actual Eurovision event in Spring 2019, they had no idea how much their fictional vision would resemble reality. The actual French entry turned out to be the gay French-Moroccan singer Bilal Hassani, whose dazzling array of wigs and makeup rivaled the fictional TJ’s sequins, and whose persona infuriated orthodox Muslims.

Trailer...