Biotope

Dismissed from the university and trapped in an existential crisis, a Franco-Israeli professor watches as the city—and his own life—fall apart, until an unexpected inheritance in Normandy offers him the chance to start over.

Joseph Shimel, a middle-aged Israeli-French academic, is dismissed from his modest position at Tel Aviv University and pushed into a life of isolation and observation in his apartment on the bustling Sderot Shaul Hamelej.

From this urban “fish tank,” Joseph becomes a lucid and caustic witness to the human fauna around him: addicts, outcasts, delirious figures who make up a chaotic microcosm, a “biotope” that mirrors the spiritual decay of the modern city.

With his dog Foxy as his only confidant, Joseph drifts through an uneventful existence marked by a loss of purpose and deep resentment toward life. Through flashbacks, we discover the root of his collapse: an unfinished PhD that his thesis supervisor, after rejecting his project, ultimately plagiarized.

His life takes an unexpected turn when he accepts a job working for the lawyer Sophie Haezrahi, assisting Francophone immigrants upon their arrival in Israel. This precarious position confronts him with the humiliation of professional demotion and the constant manipulation of his boss. In this environment, he meets Dvir Shoham, a self-proclaimed Kabbalist—amoral and ambiguous—whose blend of tragedy and magnetism draws Joseph into a spiral of emotional and financial dependence.

When a French detective informs him that he has inherited a house and a fortune from his grandmother in Normandy, Joseph glimpses the possibility of redemption. He escapes the Tel Aviv “biotope” toward the ocean of his childhood, dreaming of a second life. But the Norman paradise soon turns disenchanted: the house, damp and filled with memories, becomes an ambiguous refuge, part freedom, part emptiness.

Caught between nostalgia and uncertainty, Joseph attempts to rebuild himself—until Dvir’s shadow reaches him once again. Exploiting his charisma and a pseudoreligious discourse, Dvir convinces Joseph to invest in a fraudulent business selling portable air conditioners: a supposedly “revolutionary” idea that ultimately proves to be a scam.

Joseph loses his inheritance and returns to ruin. The man who fled the urban confinement of Tel Aviv ends up trapped in his own European dream, reduced to the solitary manager of a guesthouse called Chez Joseph, the only place willing to take him in.

RELEVANT INFORMATION: Winner of the Sapir Prize and the Newman Prize, Orly Castel-Bloom is one of the most original, provocative, and innovative voices in contemporary Israeli literature. Known for her bold style, corrosive irony, and her ability to portray modern alienation, Castel-Bloom blends dark humor with social critique to expose the fractures of today’s world.

In Biotope, Orly Castel-Bloom crafts a novel about loneliness and identity, decay and the search for meaning. The work holds strong audiovisual potential as an intimate drama with a deep psychological charge. Its tone—hovering between tragicomic and melancholic—is perfectly suited to an auteur-driven visual adaptation, offering a powerful narrative arc: an existential descent followed by an apparent redemption that ultimately leads to disillusionment. An ideal proposal for a series or film exploring solitude, emotional precarity, and modern disillusionment.

AUDIOVISUAL POTENTIAL: TV Series, Miniseries, Feature Film, TV Film.

AVAILABLE LANGUAGES: Spanish, French, Hebrew.