Bat Hen Sabag, creator, writer and star of Dori Media’s new horror comedy Soul Sucker, together with director Daphna Levin and script editor Aharon Keshales, took MIP London delegates behind the scenes of the new series in a session moderated by World Screen’s Mansha Daswani.
The MIP London session hosted by Dori Media and introduced by CEO Nadav Palti featured a screening of the first episode of Soul Sucker, which stars Sabag and was directed by Levin, a co-creator on the show, with Keshales serving as script editor. It was commissioned by HOT in Israel, with Dori Media handling worldwide sales.
“It is inspired by my family, based on a true nightmare—the universal fear of every woman: that we will become our mothers,” Sabag quipped. “My family has enough material for a whole trilogy! I come from a Romanian family with gypsy roots and a legacy of dominant, a little toxic, women.”
Sabag, creator and star of the Dori Media hit Dumb, approached Keshales about the project about two years ago. “I’m attracted to horror. She said she wanted to do Twin Peaks in Ashkelon [a coastal town in Israel], and I said, that’s a great pitch! We started talking about ideas. I immediately fell in love with [Sabag’s character], a washed-up reality star. And then she told me about another character I fell in love with, the policewoman. We talked about making it with two investigations,” one involving a family curse and the other a potential murder.
Sabag noted that the show is a hybrid of genres—comedy, supernatural and crime sleuthing—with themes that can be understood anywhere. “Every woman is a daughter running away from her mother.”
On the tonal shifts in the show, she said, “I love challenging the audience. I love to surprise; when you think it’s going one way, it goes another. I insisted this be a combination [of genres].”
Levin’s long list of credits includes the critically acclaimed In Treatment. “I thought the storyline was amazing,” she said on what attracted her to Soul Sucker. “And I know her as an actress and as a writer, and I thought, she’s great. The cast here is such a delight because they are all so special to us.”
On the significance of the Ashkelon setting, Sabag referenced its importance to her life and added, “Every country has that stinky backyard that you don’t want to go back to. This is the last place you want to come back to. And this is the only place you have.”
The series explores difficult issues like mental health, generational conflict and more through supernatural and comedic lenses, the panelists explained.
“When you deal with trauma, I think it’s better to deal with it through horror because it distances you from the real thing,” Keshales said. “If you’re talking about generational fear and the state of women, it becomes more original, more frightening and more interesting if you take it further from the real side of things. Horror has always been something that deals with reality through a different lens.”
Sabag is already at work on a second season of Soul Sucker.
