A fortnight has passed since the “Once” duo of Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova won an Oscar and for writing and performing “Falling Slowly” from John Carney’s movie, and I have, exclusively, their brand new track, which is also taken from the soundtrack of a bittersweet boy-meets-girl foreign movie.

new israeli movie, strangers, features a song by glen hansrd and marketa irglova
Liron Levo and Lubna Azabal in “Strangers”

The song is called “One More Word” and it’s from the independent Israeli movie “Strangers“, that played the Sundance festival in January and will be shown next at the Tribeca Film Festival. Hansard sings lead vocals, Irglova does background vocals.

Hear it here:


Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, “One More Word”
(not the final mix)

Guy Nattiv and Erez Tadmor wrote and directed this low budget globe-trotting Israeli Romeo meets Palestinian Juliet, where passion runs high during the soccer world cup of 2006, and then turns into hostility as the second Lebanon war breaks out that same summer. Variety’s John Anderson went ga-ga for the movie at Sundance.

I saw “Strangers” last July at the Jerusalem Film Festival and admired it’s wide-screen DV camera work, in which Ram Shweky (DP for “Frozen Days”) plays the docu-style urban vistas like a latter day Raoul Coutard. The movie’s second half, improvised on set to follow the real war that broke during filming, feels forced, but the movie’s beginning, bitterly noting that Israeli and Palestinians can live in perfect harmony as long as they are not in their home state, is utterly lovable.

Hansard and Irglova (aka The Swell Season) recorded the track in early February 2008, two weeks before they won the Oscar for “Once”. The song, as well the entire score for the movie, was written by Israeli musician Eyal Leon Katzav. Czech director Jan Hrebejk, who used Hansard’s songs in his previous film, introduced Hansrad to Nattiv and Tadmor. They sent him the song, he loved it and agreed to sing it. A week later he and Irglova recorded the song in a Czech studio, and then flew to the Los Angeles to win the Oscar. Tadmor tells him that Hansard loved the fact that “Strangers” was produced in a similar fashion to that of “Once” and wanted to support the movie. Tadmor and Nattiv now plan to shoot Hansard and Irglova for the music video of the song.