In May 1994, one of the most significant voices in the Israeli cultural scene was silenced abruptly. Hezi Laskaly, a poet, artist, choreographer, and critic, died of AIDS at the age of 42. In February 1996 a film crew set off on the trail of the words he left behind. “Yakantalisa” is a cinematic portrait of a poet, an attempt to extricate his secret and an unyielding effort to uncover the genetics of beauty itself. Laskaly understood that life and art demanded their “pound of flesh,” and as a total artist, who obscured the boundaries between the two, he paid a heavy price.