Eviatar Banai: the series “Chance for Salvation” was released on yes Docu

On Thursday, January 8, 2026, the documentary series about musician Eviatar Banai premiered on the yes Docu platform — a project that was filmed over many years and compiled into four long episodes.

The Russian title can be translated as “Chance for Salvation” (original — “סיכוי להינצל”). At the center is not an “official biography,” but a conversation about how Banai changed: from the early stage and sharp success to internal turbulence, a religious turn, and attempts to keep himself together as an adult.

The director of the project is Doron Tsabari. The format is constructed as if the authors are extracting different layers from one life and showing them without beautiful packaging: creativity, fears, family, faith, stage, and a separate line — dependence on public approval, which sometimes becomes a burden for the artist.

The first episode begins with preparations for a performance at Heichal HaTarbut in Tel Aviv: backstage, a pause before going on stage, a guitar — and the song that gave the series its title. Banai then tells how he wrote this song very quickly, in the first weeks of living in Tel Aviv — during a period of anxiety, internal discord, and self-destructive habits.

There are also everyday scenes that cut to the nerve more than “smart interviews.” After the concert, Banai stays to meet people — mostly young — who tell him that his music “pulled” them through difficult times. He hugs, takes photos, responds to each one. And at the same time, it’s visible: the role of “the person who must heal” is not only warmth but also pressure.

The series speaks a lot about the Banai family and how the surname worked not as a “pass,” but as a shadow. The line about the older brother Meir Banai is recalled, and the internal complex of “being Banai before daring to be Eviatar.” The frame features stories about early attempts to write songs, the desire to go into something else, and difficult periods when success did not bring relief.

A separate part is about the professional path: debut album (1997), the resonance around it, the feeling that inside the artist it still “storms,” even when everything outside looks like success. The series includes details about how he experienced sharp rises, falls, and turns, as well as the role of close ones — including his wife Ruth, who appears as one of the key people who kept him during the most unstable periods.

Two major Israeli reviews of the series agree on one thing: the project relies on the hero and his ability to speak about himself directly. But the assessments of the tone differ. One line sees the series as a rare, very human document — almost an intimate portrait without filters. Another emphasizes that the series sometimes “sprawls”: it balances between poetic documentary cinema and almost docu-reality, and sometimes it seems that there is too much material and too little clear story.

At the same time, it is precisely the “imperfection” that often works: when the film stops being a beautiful reflection and becomes a home conversation, an awkward confession, or an unexpected detail that explains a person better than any theses.

For the Israeli audience, this is also a story about an artist who has long become a common cultural “bridge” between different camps — and therefore any honest conversation with him turns into a conversation about the country, not just about music. These are the kinds of topics usually captured by NAnews — News of Israel | Nikk.Agency.