Archives

A Man Without a Cellphone

In a Palestinian-Israeli village, the life of a teenager is complicated: no privacy, no higher education, no beer, and hardly any girls. When a cellular antenna is put up in the middle of the village, everything turns into a whirlpool.

The Gatekeepers

Since 1967 Israel has tried to transform its incredible military victory into a bridge to peace. It failed. Forty years and two peace treaties later an atmosphere of fear and mistrust still permeates the region. In this film, the five former heads of Israel’s Secret Service exclusively reflect on their successes and failures to maintain security, even while violence flares up again, this time in the Gaza Strip. These five men individually and as a group have come to reconsider their hard-line positions and advocate a conciliatory approach toward their enemies based on a two-state solution.

Absent God – Emmanuel Levinas and the Humanism of the Other

The Absent God is a documentary film about the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, one of the foremost thinkers of the 20th century. Inspired by modern philosophy and ancient Jewish texts, Levinas developed the  “humanism of the other”, in which people are called to listen to “the silent word of the human face”. This film juxtaposes the philosophy of Levinas with the Israeli reality of 2012, where seculars and religious, Muslims and Jews, poor and rich – live in a permanent conflict under a sky of an absent God.

Beyond the Mountains and Hills

David is discharged from the army after serving 27 years. He finally returns to his family and tries to find himself in his new civilian life. When a friend suggests working for a company that markets dietary supplements, David sees this as an opportunity to get his foot in the door of the business world and make something out of himself. But this decision slowly gets him and his family entangled in the web of dark forces that rule life in Israel.

Live and Become

The year is 1984, and thousands of Africans from 26 different countries are struck by famine and flee to camps in Sudan. Israel and the United States begin a joint initiative to airlift thousands of Ethiopian Jews to Israel. Desperate to save her son from starvation and death, a Christian Ethiopian mother convinces her son to declare himself Jewish. Considered an orphan, the boy is adopted by a French Sephardi family that lives in Tel-Aviv. He grows up with the fear that his secrets and lies will be exposed: he is neither a Jew nor an orphan—only a little boy far from home.

For more information visit the Israel Film Center