A documentary about Paralympic sports and disability: Pascale, the director, used to be a swimmer in the national Israeli Paralympic team. 15 years after she retired from the team, she comes back to make a film about her former teammates. Apparently, there’s no one better to do this film – she knows the people and she’s one of them, but when they get to Sydney 2000 games, things start to go wrong…
“I know you from TV,” says Khaled, a deaf Palestinian, to Lee Dan, an Israeli sign language interpreter, when he meets her at an army checkpoint. Lee laughs. She’s got this special ring to her laugh which sometimes even deaf people can pick up. Hearing people, too, know her from the small “bubble” on the TV screen, translating programs into sign language. Outside the bubble, Lee goes on interpreting for deaf people in various situations: at school, in court, in therapy, even in the delivery room. The film goes into the bubble, and tells the story of people like Lee, who live between silence and sound.
A powerful, beautifully photographed story about the trials and tribulations of Jewish pioneers, featuring an indomitable heroine who fights for the group’s survival and success–in the face of drought, malaria, endless hard work and an Arab sheikh who goads his people into war. It climaxes in visual explosions of rampaging humanity, gushing water, and other signs of passionate frontier life. Due to its Arab-Jewish tensions, the British Mandatory Government banned Polish director Ford’s film in Palestine.
In the early sixties, Oded is just 12 years old when his father reveals to him that he is a Mossad agent and makes the boy swear to secrecy. He leaves his familiy for a mission in Cairo, where German scientists from Peenemünde develop missiles for Egypt, a threat against Israel. Two years later Oded’s worst fears come true: His father gets caught in Cairo and is facing a death sentence. Also in the court room is a young, blonde lady from Germany, his father’s wife, but definetely not Oded’s mother… 40 years later Oded breaks his long silence and journeys into his father’s real and covert identities, revealing the heavy price paid by his family, trapped in the shadows of espionage. High ranking Mossad officials appear in front of the camera for the first time to uncover the extraordinary case of ‚’The Champagne Spy’.
The critically acclaimed film focuses on the director’s mother, and sensitively portrays her struggle and determination that led her to compete in the Para Olympics in Atlanta despite of her blindness. The film also deals with the mother gradual blindness and on how it affected the family’s everyday life. Ran Carmeli, a filmmaker and a son, recalls the process that lead him to create the film: “My mother started to lose her eyesight 15 years ago. It was a gradual process that continued for about ten years. In retrospect, I understood that she made tremendous efforts in order to prevent my brother and myself from noticing the enormous change taking place in our daily family life. And then, one morning, on the clothesline at home I was confronted with an irritating picture. Lines of colorful clothes and fabrics that I brought with me from my trip to India were hanging there and all I saw was just one single color, purple. Everything was purple. A complete memory was erased, that was how I felt, as if she, light mindedly, had taken away all the memories from me without even feeling it in her way to protect herself… and me. I was angry with my mom, I was very angry with her. Only afterwards I could realize her heroism. Already then, I think, I knew that that one day I would make a documentary film about my mom. Her ambitious drive to win a medal at the Para-Olympics in Atlanta was a good initiative for me to do so…”
Two years after the Six Day War, doctors try to save the lives of an Arab terrorist and Israeli who ran into a border crash.
Vocalist Yehoram Gaon performs his Ladino songs against the historical background of Sephardic culture.
A tragic story about two siblings: a bank cashier and a heavy gambler. Owing millions to the local Mafia, the brother turns to his sister for help. Worried for his life, she steals 250 million NIS from the bank and the fraud eventually leads to the bank’s major collapse. The two siblings are sent to prison. Only then does the sister realize that her brother’s story wasn’t what it seemed…
