Israel
This film provides a retrospective of 24 hours at the Nova festival in Re’im through the lens of young individuals who endured the horror.
Christina is a Ukrainian woman who moved to Israel through a ‘bride-to-order’ kind of deal. Compared to her life back in Ukraine, life in Israel is great for Christina. She works in a beauty salon, earns her own money, and loves Israel. Her Israeli husband Michael is also satisfied with this marriage. He is happy that he found a woman who can live with him. In fact, he is so satisfied that he starts his own little business scouting for Ukrainian brides for other Israeli men. Michael’s recent matchmaking is a special one—the bride’s name is Valeria, and she’s Christina’s younger sister. Michael went out of his way and found the best man he could get for her. His name is Eitan, and while he may not be the most handsome guy in the country, he is a good-hearted, generous man. However, Valeria is different to her older sister. And the whole delicate balance is at risk.
Mira Segal wakes up screaming one morning to discover that her husband has disappeared. The police open a Missing Person file and advise her to wait. As weeks turn into months, Mira continues to search for him while exploring her own desires and the guilt of not wanting him back.
The film takes place in Tel Aviv, much of it in a fictitious local pub called Barbie, a satirical nickname for a famous Israeli mental health institution. The pub’s name hints at the characters and the events which occur in the pub and which befall its owner (Daliah), the employees and customers. The plot unfolds with a streak of violence which takes a surprising turn.
The film tells the story of the Chernobyl accident through a mosaic of unique personal testimonies of its participants. The experiences of the difficult past and the sad results of the present recreate the full picture of the accident 30 years later.
“My Father My Lord” is an intimate and deeply disturbing story of the conflict between a father’s love and his deep devotion to religion. A respected Orthodox Rabbi dotes on his only son but his religious strictures leave an emotional gap between the impish child and the stern father. When the father’s all-consuming obsession with observing religious ritual inadvertently leads to tragedy, his previously subservient wife rages against both her husband and God. A dramatic retelling of the story of Abraham.
Family secrets, lies, high drama and generations of contemporary history unspool in this international story that begins with World War II and concludes with an emotional 21st-century family reunion. Izak was born inside the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp in 1945 and sent for adoption in Israel. Secret details of his birth mother, an unknown brother in Canada and his father’s true identity slowly emerge in this extremely personal investigative film.
A fascinating journey through the life of Israeli artist Dani Karavan, an irreverent and charismatic creator, recognized worldwide for radically transforming public space with his monumental environmental installations.
Raya and Victor built a shared career as the Soviet Union’s most beloved film dubbers. As the USSR collapses, the Jewish couple must immigrate to Israel and reinvent themselves to find employment.
Freddy wants to be a star. He writes and performs his own songs, but has no record contract yet. He has an idea to form a group of back-up vocalists and recruits four beautiful girls who also happen to be his former lovers. They name themselves “THE FOUR PIN-UPS.” But even this doesn’t work because Freddy wants the spotlight for himself. However, by chance, the girls find themselves onstage without Freddy; they start singing and capture the audience and sign a contract with a big producer. They seem to be on the road to success with their own sound and a new wave image. Except the dream begins to lose its glow; scandal, conflicts, and disenchantment start affecting the group. They go from number one to…
Menachem, a former frontman for a rock band, is now religious, and a father to a six-year-old. When his daughter is diagnosed with cancer, he must find a creative solution to fund the expensive treatments. He reunites his band for one last tour. The journey to save his daughter exposes old wounds and allows him to reconnect with his secular past. Menachem understands that only a new connection to his past and to his music can pave the road to his own redemption.
Rebecca, an American who has been living in Jerusalem for a few months now, has just broken off her engagement. She gets into a cab driven by Hanna, an Israeli. But Hanna is on her way to Jordan, to the Free Zone, to pick up a large sum of money.
In Breaking Bread, exotic cuisine and a side of politics are on the menu. Dr. Nof Atamna-Ismaeel – the first Muslim Arab to win Israel’s MasterChef – is on a quest to make a social change through food. And so, she founded the A-sham Arabic Food Festival in Haifa. There, pairs of Arab and Jewish chefs collaborate on mouthwatering dishes like kishek (a Syrian yogurt soup), and qatayef (a dessert typically served during Ramadan), as we savor the taste of hope and discover the food of their region free from political and religious boundaries.
‘Shoelaces’ tells the story of a complicated relationship between an aging father and his special-needs son, whom he abandoned while he was still a young boy. Reuben’s (60) kidney’s are failing and his son Gadi (35), wants to donate one of his own kidney’s to help save his father’s life. However, the transplant committee objects to the procedure claiming that Rueben, acting as Gadi’s sole legal guardian, does not have the right to authorize such an invasive procedure. Gadi, who recently lost his mother, is afraid of losing his father as well. He feels he finally has the chance to do something meaningful; to become a man and stand on his own. He’s furious with the committee’s decision and sets out to fight for his right to save his father’s life. Through the film’s portrayal of a relationship full of love, rejection and co-dependency, it manages to shed some light and question the importance of human life, human connection and if life is even possible without it either one of them.
An anxious woman navigates the bustle of modern day Cairo to find her missing lover, a young adult strives for an authentic connection in a future society numbed by alcohol, and two Cold War-era lovers face the consequences of finding romance across political borders. A vibrant collection of short films – by turns gritty and dreamlike – exploring the changes and complexities of a Love Evolving.
Filmmaker Trevor Graham is an Australian ‘hummus tragic’. Every week in his Bondi Beach home he observes the hummus making ritual, mashing chickpeas, lemon juice, garlic and tahina. But when the Hummus War erupted in 2008, among the usual suspects, Israel, Lebanon and Palestine, Graham was hungry for more. But this war ha no soldiers, bullets or tanks. Just chickpeas and hummus. Make Hummus Not War is a humorous homage to the chickpea’s most distinguished dish. But there’s a personal story, how Graham became a hummus tragic, a father who served in Palestine during WW2 and two lovers in his life, one Syrian, one Jewish, with whom he shared a great culinary passion.
Joy can’t let go of her ex, but doesn’t seem to be able to fall for the new guy. In the meantime she keeps having casual sex with strangers.
A party in Tel Aviv, Israel. Danny is looking for Max to share that she is pregnant with his child; but Max has just started a new relationship with Avishag whose rough sexual fantasy he is trying to make come true.
One of Cannon Films’ two 1976 Italian-Israeli co-productions starring Lee Van Cleef and Leif Garrett (Gianfranco Parolini’s Pistola di Dio was the other), this spaghetti western was actually shot in the Middle East by American director Joseph Manduke. Pop star Garrett plays Tom, a teenager who teams with a black gunfighter named Isaac (Jim Brown) to avenge his family. The culprit was McClain (Van Cleef), a sadistic outlaw who carried out the brutal rape-massacre, but his role is minor, as most of the film deals with Tom’s maturation and coming to terms with his feelings. Omnipresent 1970s character actors Glynnis O’Connor and John Marley co-star. If there is anything remarkable about Kid Vengeance, it is Francesco Masi’s fine musical score, but the film is otherwise anemic.
Zaza is a 31-year old Israeli bachelor, handsome and intelligent, and his family wants to see him married. But tradition dictates that Zaza has to choose a young virgin. She must be beautiful and from a good family, preferably rich. Zaza’s parents, Yasha and Lily drag Zaza to meet potential brides and their families. Zaza has no choice. He plays along with his family, advocates of the suffocating traditions of their Georgian Jewish heritage. But Zaza always manages to somehow get out of being engaged. What his parents don’t know is that Zaza is already in love. Judith is sensuous, strong and intriguing. She’s also a divorcée with a 6-year-old daughter. So Zaza has kept Judith a secret from his family. He will have to choose between respect of the strict confines of family and tradition, or the love of his life.
Rules must be followed. For the “supervisors” of the Bat Yam neighbourhood in Israel, this means ensuring that women are dressed appropriately, that people respect Shabbat, or that Arabs from Jaffa don’t enter the neighbourhood with music blaring from their cars. Avi, Kobi and Yaniv are young and know how to fight. They want to force their neighbours to become religious, without hesitating to be violent in the name of God. The inhabitants admire the gang and are afraid of them at the same time. One day a new girl, Miri, arrives. She is not familiar with the strict rules of modesty. The gang’s leader Avi is going to be torn between his feelings for Miri and his dedication to the gang.
Ovadia Rachmim is the strongest and most violent doorman of Tel Aviv night clubs. He and his wife Rachel are trying to get pregnant for 5 years. A small time gangster named Shalom, offers Ovadia a job, to be a debts collector, offering him a lot of money. Ovadia sees this as great opportunity to start an expensive private treatment for his wife. As soon as Rachel gets pregnant, he decides to stop working for Shalom. Shalom wants him for the most important mission. The mission in which Ovadia has to betray all his best friends. Now it’s the time to pay the price of becoming a father.
The year is 1999 and the storyline is actually a number of sub-plots all revolving around the 13-year old Clara, a girl that can predict the future and has telekinetic powers. The sub-plots include a boy in her class who has a crush on her, his family, her family and her principal that keeps talking French for some strange reason.
A tragic comedy centered on the HR manager of Israel’s largest industrial bakery, who sets out to save the reputation of his business and prevent the publication of a defamatory article.
Lea Tsemel, a Jewish-Israeli lawyer, defends Palestinians: from feminists to fundamentalists, from nonviolent demonstrators to armed militants. As far as most Israelis are concerned, she defends the indefensible. As far as Palestinians are concerned, she’s more than an attorney, she’s an ally. «Advocate» follows Tsemel in real time, including the trial of a 13-year-old boy — her youngest client to date.
Sallah Shabati, the patriarch of the big family recently arrived to Israel from Yemen, tries to make money and get better housing, in a country that can barely provide for its own and is in the midst of absorbing hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from Arab countries.
Every year since 2011, a unique beauty contest has been taking place in Haifa. The contestants are female survivors of the Holocaust. In the midst of this flashy spectacle, their personal traumas remain as deep as ever. There are many things about this contest that are controversial: it is organized by the right Zionist organization, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, and the dubious contest itself rises the public indignation of various speakers, including other survivors.
Through previously undiscovered private letters, photos and diaries that were found in the Himmler family house in 1945, the “The Decent One” exposes a unique and at times uncomfortable access to the life and mind of the merciless “Architect of the Final Solution” Heinrich Himmler.
Hitparkut (Dissolution) combines an almost surreal fairy-tale energy with brutal black and white realism to explore the condition of violence which permeates contemporary Israeli society. Shot is Yafo (the predominantly Arab area of Tel Aviv), the movie follows the moral collapse and first glimmer of redemption, of a young, morose Israeli Jew, played by Israeli actor Didi Fire
A young, orthodox Jewish woman is alienated from her Jerusalem community and drawn into the world of spirit.
The unbelievable story of Leonid Bernshtein, a young Jewish soldier who rose to become the leader and led the operation to destroy the secret facility of the notorious Nazi V2 ballistic missiles.
Jonathan Agassi is a superstar in the world of gay porn. He lives the wild life in Berlin and Tel Aviv, where he works in films and live shows and has a second job as an escort. Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll – and all of it in large quantities. But the industry is tough, and behind the confident smile is an insecure boy with an absent father and a very close relationship to his broad-minded mother. The contrast to the superficial success grows and grows, but in the world of porn there is no room for crises. Here, you must deliver the goods, every single time – and every single day. Otherwise you are done. The identity crisis is smouldering, Agassi is floundering and drugs become tempting as an easy way out. But how long can he hold onto himself? Over the course of eight years, and with much mutual trust, the director Tomer Heymann has followed Agassi right up to the culmination of his life’s biggest crisis.
Far from Tel Aviv and big city crimes, Daphna, 40, a promising police officer with a big mouth, finds herself in the small town of Afula dealing with petty crimes, seeking shade from the scorching heat and dodging the nagging question:” When are you going to get married, and have kids?”. The disappearance of Orly Elimeleh, a beautiful and wild 36 year-old army widow and former beauty queen, soon raises another troubling question for Daphna – why isn’t anybody looking for her? This indifference towards Orly’s uncertain fate shakes Daphna to the core. Matan, the younger 34 year-old son and “black sheep” of Orly’s late husband’s family, seems to be the only one who shares Daphna’s concerns, which pushes her to step beyond her professional boundaries. As her faith both in herself and in everybody surrounding her is called into question, Daphna will have to do something she has managed to avoid her entire adult life : put her trust in a man.
Max finds himself in possession of an ancient scroll that describes the entire history of humankind from beginning to end. Seeking to use the information for his own gain, Max triggers the mechanism that begins influencing his own life.
17-year-old Asher is split between his charismatic teacher and his brash father, who wants him to take over his scaffolding business.
A tale of friendship between two men, one Jewish and the other Arab, as the state of Israel is being created.
Dov (75) a widower, lives in a nursing home where he feels like he’s in jail. He dreams of buying back his old house and returning live there, but he has has no money since losing his his pension and he blames the State. When he realizes that everyone in the nursing home consumes state-sponsored medical cannabis, he finds his way out. Not by smoking, but by selling cannabis, which he gets from the other tenants. When love, police, and the local mafia enter the picture, Dov finds himself at a crossroads where he has to decide whether he would be willing to risk everything for what really matters to him.
Shot on location in Cambodia, including many scenes in actual brothels in the notorious red light district of Phnom Penh, HOLLY is a captivating, touching and emotional experience. Patrick, an American card shark and dealer of stolen artifacts, has been ‘comfortably numb’ in Cambodia for years, when he encounters Holly, a 12-year-old Vietnamese girl, in the K11 red light village. The girl has been sold by her impoverished family and smuggled across the border to work as a prostitute.
