Israel
Ben and Raz are painstakingly pursuing their desire to have a child, and the migrant neighbourhood where this gay couple has set up their new flat is on the up. But a conflict over a newly planted tree in the city brings deep-seated prejudices to light.
A famous actress goes incognito to seek treatment for a medical issue, and in a hospital waiting room she meets three remarkable women who help her face adversity with humor and camaraderie.
A few weeks before the opening of the Eichmann trial, transcripts of recorded conversations that Adolf Eichmann had with a Dutch Nazi journalist, Willem Sassen, were mysteriously handed over to prosecutor Gideon Hausner. The conversations were held a few years before Eichmann was brought to Israel by the Mossad. During the trial, Eichmann tried to convince that he was only a bureaucrat who carried out orders, but in the transcripts, Eichmann was found boasting and proud of his significant role in planning and executing the Final Solution. For the first time, we will confront Eichmann with himself in full color, revealing the hidden factors and motives that succeeded in hiding these recordings.
1948: an Egyptian filmmaker is creating newsreel stories about a volunteer force tasked to liberate Palestinian farmers. The journey propels him towards a chance encounter with a tenacious young leader of a nearby commune that will set in motion events that will change their lives forever.
South America, 1960. A lonely and grumpy Holocaust survivor convinces himself that his new neighbor is none other than Adolf Hitler. Not being taken seriously, he starts an independent investigation to prove his claim, but when the evidence still appears to be inconclusive, Polsky is forced to engage in a relationship with the enemy in order to obtain irrefutable proof.
A Mossad agent embarks on her first mission as a computer hacker in her home town of Tehran.
The film follows the journey of Kitty, the imaginary friend to whom Anne Frank dedicated her diary. A fiery teenager, Kitty wakes up in the near future in Anne Frank’s house in Amsterdam and embarks on a journey to find Anne, who she believes is still alive, in today’s Europe. While the young girl is shocked by the modern world, she also comes across Anne’s legacy.
Emmy-winning Israeli filmmaker Maya Zinshtein (Forever Pure) returns to the Festival with this riveting exposé that investigates the unlikely connection between Jews and evangelical Christians in the U.S. and Israel, and the startling hypocrisy at its core. From conversations with a devout pastor and his congregation in rural Kentucky to meetings with religious leaders in Washington D.C. and Israel, Zinshtein closely follows Chicago native Yael Eckstein, President and CEO of the influential advocacy group the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, in her fundraising and coalition-building efforts. What she uncovers is a shocking alliance rooted in apocalyptic prophecy and driven in unprecedented ways by Donald Trump’s White House.
A gay New York Times travel writer comes to Tel Aviv after suffering a tragedy. The energy of the city and his relationship with a younger man brings him back to life.
A subversive love story between clashing cultures and families, KISS ME BEFORE IT BLOWS UP is a romantic misadventure crossing all borders. When two generations of Israeli women fall for a German woman and an Palestinian man, chaos follows. What happens with lovers who don’t fit but do belong together?
A 40-year-old writer returns to his family house where he was raised and that he escaped after half a lifetime – to face his brother who stayed instead, inherited their family bakery and married the woman who they both loved.
Yoram, a 50-year-old veterinarian living in Tel-Aviv is forced to re-examine his relationship with his adolescent daughter Roni, after she wishes to end her life. He decides to take her on a journey to visit her mother’s family, a process of self and mutual discovery in a primordial desert land enveloping the Dead Sea.
The story of a great rivalry between a father and son, both eccentric professors in the Talmud department of Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The son has an addictive dependency on the embrace and accolades that the establishment provides, while his father is a stubborn purist with a fear and profound revulsion for what the establishment stands for, yet beneath his contempt lies a desperate thirst for some kind of recognition. The Israel Prize, Israel’s most prestigious national award, is the jewel that brings these two to a final, bitter confrontation.
Eitan works security in the Dead Sea Works factory. On his way to a night shift he is sexually assaulted by his bus driver, thus begins a dream-like journey on the silent beaches of the Dead Sea.
The film captures the daily duality of three young Palestinian women in Tel Aviv, caught between hometown tradition and big city abandon, and the price they must pay for a lifestyle that seems obvious to many: the freedom to work, party, fuck, and choose.
Through newly discovered geological and statistical patterns, many believe it can be proven that the Tribulation is about to begin!
Back to Berlin is the first biker flick-meets-holocaust feature documentary. Eleven motor bikers have a mission to take the Maccabiah torch from Israel to the site of the infamous 1936 Berlin Olympics, for the first Jewish Olympic Games on German soil. They will retrace the heroic journeys of the original 1930s’ Maccabiah riders and discover how they or their families survived the Holocaust.
The ‘Casa do Povo’ cultural centre in São Paulo, an icon of the secular Jewish workers’ movement: a crumbling theatre flanked by staircases, entryways and corridors. Construction noise drones away in the background, clinking crockery, a broom sweeping over tiled floors, an expressive façade of countless adjustable panes of glass covered by a patina. It’s October 2016 and a group of young people are preparing a preview of Bickels [Socialism]. The venue is to form a prologue to the completed film, which tours 22 buildings in Israel designed by Samuel Bickels, most of which for kibbutzim. Dining halls, children’s houses, agricultural buildings, bright structures inserted into the Mediterranean landscape with great ingenuity. An architecture with a sell-by date: That many are now empty or have been repurposed at best is linked to the decline of the socialist ideals they embody.
Amos Gitai returns to the occupied territories for the first time since his 1982 documentary FIELD DIARY. WEST OF THE JORDAN RIVER describes the efforts of citizens, Israelis and Palestinians, who are trying to overcome the consequences of occupation. Gitai’s film shows the human ties woven by the military, human rights activists, journalists, mourning mothers and even Jewish settlers. Faced with the failure of politics to solve the occupation issue, these men and women rise and act in the name of their civic consciousness. This human energy is a proposal for long overdue change.
“On The Map” tells the story of ’77 team, the one that brought the first European Cup to Israel and became “The Team of the Nation” Still demoralized after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel was hungry for a collective uplifting event. “On The Map”, a fast-moving, emotional and awe-inspiring documentary, recounts the story of how one Tel Aviv team no one thought could win toppled the four-time defending European Champions and put Israel firmly on the map. Featuring interviews with the Jewish American athletes who made history, “On the Map” combines the pulsepounding action of a high-stakes game with an incendiary political situation at the height of the Cold War to deliver a film that honors Israeli heroes, mesmerizes fans of the game and captures the spirit of a nation triumphant and victorious against all odds.
A beautifully affecting love story that has rightly earned comparisons to Brokeback Mountain, Haim Tabakman’s potent yet impeccably restrained tale has won awards and accolades at film festivals the world over. Aaron, a pillar in Jerusalem’s Orthodox community is respected by friends and family. However, when he hires handsome runaway student Ezri to assist with his business, sexual tensions bristle and the pair cautiously embark on a love affair. Meanwhile, a neighbouring shopkeeper persists in seeing a man of her own choosing, even though she’s been promised by her father to another. As forbidden truths come to the fore, these lovers are forced to either confront or relent in the face of a centuries-old religious community, with startling results.
A young operative is sent on a mission to follow an older agent who’s behavior has come into question.
More than two decades after catapulting to stardom with The Princess Bride, Robin Wright decides to take her final job: preserving her likeness for a future Hollywood. Through a deal brokered by her loyal, longtime agent and the head of Miramount Studios, her digital doppelganger will be controlled by the studio, and will star in any film they want, with no restrictions. In return, she receives healthy compensation so she can care for her ailing son. Twenty years later, under the creative vision of the studio’s head animator, Wright’s double rises to immortal stardom. With her contract expiring, she is invited to speak at Miramount’s “Futurological Congress”. However, a group of terrorists plot an attack on the convention.
A 707 aircraft jetliner on its way from Athens to Rome and then to New York City is hijacked by Lebanese terrorists. The terrorists demand that the pilot take them to Beirut. What the terrorists don’t realize is that an elite team of commandoes led by Major McCoy (Norris) and by Colonel Alexander (Marvin) has been called into service to eliminate all terrorists on the jetliner.
Rachel Singer is a former Mossad agent who tried to capture a notorious Nazi war criminal – the Surgeon of Birkenau – in a secret Israeli mission that ended with his death on the streets of East Berlin. Now, 30 years later, a man claiming to be the doctor has surfaced, and Rachel must return to Eastern Europe to uncover the truth. Overwhelmed by haunting memories of her younger self and her two fellow agents, the still-celebrated heroine must relive the trauma of those events and confront the debt she has incurred.
The movie follows a group of young friends in the city of Tel Aviv and is as much a love song to the city as it is an exploration of the claim that people in Tel Aviv are isolated from the rest of the country and the turmoil it’s going through. The movie looks at young people’s lives in Tel Aviv through the POVs of gays and straights, Jews and Arabs, men and women.
Yitzhak runs the turkey farm his father built with his own two hands after they emigrated from Iran to Israel. When his son Moti turns thirteen, Yitzhak teaches him the trade, hoping that he will continue the proud family tradition. But Moti doesn’t like working in the turkey barn; his passion is fixing up junkyard cars and bringing them back to life. Moti’s mother Sarah tries to reconcile between the two, while his grandfather pushes Yitzhak to take a firm hand with his son. Yitzhak takes Moti’s refusal to work in the turkey barn as a personal rejection. Though he loves his son dearly, he makes it his mission to impose the family farm on Moti. The arrival of Darius, the uncle from America, sets off a chain of events that will undermine the familial harmony. Soon enough Yitzhak will learn that his son is just as stubborn as he is. The conflict is inevitable.
While her mother is away from home, 12-year-old Adar’s role-playing games with her stepfather move into dangerous territory. Seeking an escape, Adar finds Alan, an ethereal boy that accompanies her on a dark journey between reality and fantasy.
After a massive earthquake destroys Los Angeles, a new order is formed. But disagreement among the ranks leads to more war and disruption, and The Last Patrol must bring order if there’s to be any hope for the future.
