Joseph & Josephine

After three years of dedicating my time, thoughts and money, I fulfilled a dream and turned a truck into a luxurious mobile home, the first of its kind in Israel.
My name is Yosi Tayar (54) and until recently, I lived in Tel Aviv. Around me were concrete monsters that killed my skyline and blocked the sunlight. I’m single, a father to twelve year-old Shira, my daughter of whom I have joint custody. I work as an animator, surrounded by good friends, a loving family, and mother Geula; the closest person to me, who has a unique Tripolitan style talent to get on my nerves.

At the age of fifty, a warning bell started ringing in my head, alerting me that it's time for me to mold new content into my life. One evening I saw a TV program about people who turn automobiles into mobile homes. The idea excited me, and with my ‘Peter Pan spirit’, I decided to build a mobile home and make a film in which I show life through the eyes of a man who wishes for freedom but is limited by conventional fences and Israeli reality. A new spirit swept through my life. It took me three years to build a house on wheels, and what years those were! Like Odysseus, making his way to Ithaca, to his beloved Penelope, so I moved toward the goal I set for myself. Like Odysseus, who overcame every obstacle on his way home, so I overcame any obstacle that stood in my way: the banks, who refused my mortgage requests, because what kind of guarantee is a home on wheels?! Friends who doubted, professional workers who did not meet deadlines and almost dismantled the project. The need to earn a living, that pushed me to work on television programs for children. My desire to be a super-dad for my only daughter. And my mother, close and loving, that never stopped worrying.
I had no idea what a joy it would be to drive my home truck, Josephine, for the first time. So much pride, so much freedom. But I realized the significance of my achievement on the day my mother Geula, who did not believe in it and thought it was impossible, who begged me to stop wandering around and live like everyone else, who was so afraid of my failure, invited strangers to come in and see the house that her son built with his own hands. The success of my Josephine attracted other people like me, with mobile homes, and I found the ‘villages on wheels,’ a movement that seeks a change in lifestyle. But one Friday night I went to sleep in my truck and did not wake up.

The autopsy report said, “A sudden death by fatal disturbances of heart rhythm.”
My journey on earth ended, or perhaps is beginning again

A film by Joseph Tayar and Ronit Tayar