Can the means used to resolve the conflict in South Africa be applied to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? As someone who experienced both conflicts firsthand, Robi Damelin wonders about this. Born in South Africa during the apartheid era, she later lost her son, who was serving with the Israeli Army reserve in the Occupied Territories. At first she attempted to initiate a dialogue with the Palestinian who killed her child. When her overtures were rejected, she embarked on a journey back to South Africa to learn more about the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Committee’s efforts in overcoming years of enmity. Robi’s thought-provoking journey leads from a place of deep personal pain to a belief that a better future is possible.
A father and his filmmaker son explore the previously untold Holocaust story of 1,000 Viennese Jews stranded on the frozen Danube River in 1941 awaiting rescue by Ruth Klieger, a senior agent of the newly created Mossad. Intriguing storytelling weaves together interviews with survivors, dramatic reenactments, and a father who must tell this story.
While filming his father revisiting his childhood city of Mumbai, India, Israeli director Erez Laufer finds himself caught in the worst terror attack in the history of the city. As the drama of the terrorist takeover of Chabad House in Mumbai unfolds, the Laufer family recounts how they found refuge there in the 1940s after fleeing the Nazis.
Past and present collide as the family history is echoed in a contemporary war, and a little-known story emerges of the Jewish refugees who found a safe haven in Mumbai during World War II. Rafting to Bombay is the story of how 5 year old Nahum and his mother escaped the Nazis in Poland, crossed Europe by train and sailed on a raft on the Tigris River until they reached the exotic and fascinating India of monkeys, elephants and Rajas. But Nahum’s childhood experience, which is remembered as an enchanting fantasy, was in reality, a chilling story of a last minute escape.
During the protest of summer 2011, we met the homeless – some suffering from PTSD, others victims of sexual assault, domestic violence, mental illnesses, sex workers and drug addicts – people who had nowhere to go when their tent camp was destroyed.
Bum’s Go Home exposes the suffering – and in certain events even death – caused by the
blind bureaucracy and our determination not to see.
In 1935, Max Shorenstein left his position as Chief Rabbi of Copenhagen to fulfill a longtime dream: to build a zoo in Tel Aviv. Against all odds, the Tel Aviv Zoo became one of the city’s greatest attractions. Yet envy, greed, and corruption eventually saw Shorenstein banished from the paradise he built. A tale of a city raised from sand to become an international, cultural, and financial hub a century later, and the price that was paid for this exponential growth.
Mini-series
“Moshe Dayan was radioactive,” says his grandson, Sa’ar, as he tries to explain how throughout Dayan’s life and decades after his death, his family still struggles with the large shadow cast by one of the most interesting and enigmatic characters in Israel’s history. The series follows five generations of the Dayan family—“The Israeli Kennedys”—whose story mirrors that of Israel itself. They have played an essential part in the critical milestones in the life of the state and tell its story in an intimate, scandalous, and fascinating manner.
The story of a remarkable athlete who captured the spirit of a nation, and how he ultimately triumphed despite the odds. In the summer of 1976, Aulcie Perry was spotted by a scout for Maccabi Tel Aviv while playing basketball in Harlem, and was signed immediately. Just a year later, Perry, who took the Israeli basketball team to their first European championship, started dating supermodel Tami Ben Ami, converted to Judaism, and became one of Israel’s biggest athletes. But not all was well behind the scenes.
The Electrifiers won the 1984 Best New Artist Award, but have been stuck in traffic on the highway to international stardom ever since. Thirty years after their win, no one remembers their hit song and the aging band still struggles to catch its real big break between gigs at nursing homes and cheap dives. Featuring cameo appearances by real-life 80s Israeli pop icons, The Electrifiers is a blissfully sweet story in which everyone, old and slightly less old, comes of age.
When an American tech billionaire is kidnapped in Jerusalem, the CIA decides to send its own agent to join the Israeli Mossad team’s rescue operation. A hilarious international espionage caper ensues as the Mossad and the CIA compete to save the world from an international terror organization, ala Airplane! and Naked Gun.
After 16 years on the police force, Rashi (Eran Naim) is suspended after an incident at work. His world is thrown into disarray, and so is that of his family. An intensely realistic profile of a seemingly strong man whose questionable claim to power may lead to tragedy.
Trigger warning: domestic violence
