Archives

The Appointed

A rabbi’s son rebels against his roots and becomes a magician. A woman enters his life and turns his tricks into metaphysical phenomena. The son is forced to choose between love and living up to his father’s expectations.

Scar

A man and a woman meet at night, and she drags him into the darkness. After their encounter, she runs away, leaving him with a scar. He proceeds to look for her via private eye, attempting to discover the source of his troubling memory. But they live in an alienated world, where one buys satisfaction with money. Will they they ever find each other?

Late Marriage

Yasha and Lili would like ZaZa, their 32 years old son to be married the Georgian way and tradition. Every night they set out to check yet another potential bride. Zaza charms them but at the critical moment, he ruins everything. Zaza is madly in love with Judith, a single mother with a 6 years old daughter. When Zaza’s parents find out about their son’s secret affair, all hell breaks loose…

The Band’s Visit

The Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra arrives in Israel from Egypt for a cultural event. They soon find out that there is no delegation to meet them, nor any arrangements to get to their destination of Petah Tiqva. They struggle to find accommodations in an unfamiliar place.

Zion and His Brother

In a gritty neighborhood in Haifa, Israel, when cascading events drive an alienating wedge between inseparable brothers, their fierce loyalty is shaken and their interdependence fractured. First-time filmmaker Eran Merav’s Zion and His Brother delivers sensitive insight into the dynamic of close siblings and the adolescent struggle to differentiate oneself from one’s family. With an absent father and a single mother consumed with paying bills and satisfying her boyfriend, tough, smoldering Meir has taken it upon himself to protect his gentle younger brother, Zion. He wheels Zion on his bike and holds his hand at the dentist; and when Zion reports that a schoolmate has stolen his coveted soccer sneakers, Meir handles the problem. But the reprisal spins out of control, and soon Zion understands he’s complicit in a secret only he and Meir share. This terrible pressure and Meir’s clashes with their mother’s boyfriend propel Zion to risk his fraternal allegiance—and sense of security—for a survival mode of his own.In this sensual, almost classical, coming-of-age drama, brought to life with powerful immediacy by Reuven Badalov, Ofer Hayoun, and the always-mesmerizing Ronit Elkabetz (The Band’s Visit), Merav tenderly renders nuanced, layered characters in complex circumstances and sustains exquisite narrative tension, where a lesser storyteller would settle for obvious resolutions. The result is quietly devastating.

Or (My Treasure)

Or, a teenager who struggles to be responsible for her prostitute mother Ruthie, played by Ronit Elkabetz. Or’s responsibility at home gives way to an increasingly wilder side of her personality, pushed further by the mother of her boyfriend who tells Or that their sexual relationship isn’t suitable for her son. Ruthie, meanwhile, tries to hold down a poorly paid job as a cleaner and give up prostitution at her daughter’s urging, yet is unable to stay away from the streets.

Invisible

Over twenty years after Lily and Nira were raped by the same serial rapist, an unexpected encounter brings them together. Single mother Nira, a reserved television editor, comes across charismatic Lily, a left-wing activist who is helping Palestinians harvest their olives. So intense is the chance meeting, that Nira finds herself digging into her past, stirring up memories, and trying to bridge the gap between the person she once was and the person she has become. Nira becomes increasingly obsessed with her ‘mission’ to find out all she can about the rapist. She discovers that although he behaved violently towards all the women, the press named him the Polite Rapist and described him as “well-mannered” since he forced his victims to spend hours with him, talking to them and raping them in turn. Lily, bound up in a profound crisis in her marriage, tries to prevent the trauma of the rape from surfacing, but it penetrates every part of her life. She rejects Nira’s attempts to befriend her, but no longer has the strength to block out the pain. Her relationships with her son, daughter and husband are strained to the limit, and Lily eventually realizes that she has no option but to confront the cracks in her life. Lily joins forces with Nira, and together the two of them begin a painful yet liberating journey to release the anguish that unwillingly connected them more than twenty years ago. The film refers to an actual serial rapist operating in Tel Aviv, in 1978, and includes televised material and recorded testimonies of women raped by the same man. The mixing of fact with fiction, and the relationships it creates between the traumas of rape and the Israeli routine of military violence, are emotionally powerful and thought-provoking.

The Flood

Everything is complicated in Yoni’s life. He’s almost 13, real gifted, but physically undeveloped and struggles daily to grow up before his threatening up-coming Bar Mitzva. He sells homework in order to secretly buy a body building wonder powder, which so far does nothing, he stretches every night with heavy weight tied to his legs and screams with full force in front of the wind to thicken his girlish, unstable voice, that gave him the ridiculous nick name – Helium. His new classmates, a year older and two heads taller, bully him at every chance they get and his parents barely say a word to each other and communicate through him, if at all. As if all this isn’t enough – only a week before the ceremony – his autistic brother, Tomer, 17, hidden for years in a hostel that is now shut down – returns home. This shakes not only Yoni’s life, but the unstable foundation of the entire family.

Seven Days (Shiva)

It is 1991 in the midst of the first Gulf War and Israel is under daily missile attacks. But in the Ohayon family, tragedy has hit in more mundane circumstances as beloved Maurice, one of nine brothers and sisters, has suddenly died. The family gathers for the traditional seven days of mourning (shiva) in which they are not allowed to leave the house. The intensity of this situation is a catalyst for more than just emotional support and communal grief. Jealousy, gossip, long term rivalry and financial problems come to the fore, as each of the siblings is faced with their frustrated ambitions.

gett poster

Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem

An Israeli woman (Ronit Elkabetz) fights for three years to obtain a divorce from her devout husband (Simon Abkarian), who refuses to grant his permission to dissolve the marriage.