The Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo has been the target of sniper attacks from the adjacent Palestinian village of Beit Jala since the beginning of the new Intifada. This timely documentary features interviews with neighbors talking about their personal reactions to their plight. It also presents the Israeli government’s reaction-positioning tanks in streets of their once peaceful neighborhood. As we watch images of mortar attacks on Beit Jala and the continuous shelling of Gilo we are made witnesses to the human consequences of the current hostilities.
Yosef and Bracha married when they were 12 in Sana`a, Yemen and lived together for close to 70 years. Yosef became absorbed in his books, while Bracha took care of the needy.
Before he dies, Rabbi Yosef Kapach hands his granddaughter Einat, director of the film, a bundle of pages which uncover a secret he has kept close to his heart his entire life- the secret of the theological war that split the Yemnite Jewish community.
The documents tell of his persecution as a young orphan by the Jews of Yemen, a persecution that continues until the day he dies in Israel.
Having read these words, Einat sets out on a journey to understand why he chose her to pass on the legacy and how he managed to turn his life around from such a lonely point to a world-famous Jewish philosopher.
The Jewish Cemetery at Weissensee is 130 years old. It has never been closed and as such represents one of the few institutions in Germany that were to remain in Jewish hands under the Nazis. Neither the cemetery nor its archive was ever destroyed – making it a real find for collectors of stories. This is a story of how members of extended families from Argentina come in search of their ancestors’ graves.
This film presents a modern day “Solomon”s Trial”. Twenty years ago, an Israeli family, the Tourgemans, adopted Bruna, a four month old Brazilian infant. After two years, the biological mother, Rosilda Vasgonsales, arrived in Israel claiming that Bruna had been kidnapped from her. With the help of a British television crew, Rosilda petitioned the high court. The Tourgemans tried to fight, but a psychiatrist sent an assessment to the court asserting that the child would have no irreversible damage if she were to be returned to her biological mother. What has happened to Bruna since then? How did the court case affect the course of her life? Was the intervention of the television crew justified? Nili Tal returns to Curitiba in Brazil, and follows the events of Bruna and her biological parents.
Even though 55 years have passed since Professor Yair Tauman was suddenly estranged from his beloved sister Tikva, who was sent away to begin a new life abroad, his wounds haven’t healed.
Each day of her life, Tikva Jeral, now a retired social worker living in the suburbs of Baltimore, USA, tries to overcome the traumas she sustained as a child when she was torn away from her family and forced to move from Israel to the United States.
The admission that Yair was not her brother, was told to her on the same day that she left for America. On that day she was once again being compelled to build a new identity, for the fourth time in her young life.
“My Sister, Tikva” is a documentary film about the twists and turns that shuffled a young child from identity to identity until only her Hebrew name – Tikva (Hope) – was all there was left to attest to who she was.
Tikva and Yair undergo a journey together to try to unravel the mystery of their lives. Yair accompanies Tikva through an emotional reunion with Adomas Gecevicius, who had been her father and savior in Kovno in 1943. Is it possible after all these years to heal the pain and reconcile the emotional past?
The film, which was shot in America, Lithuania and Israel, shifts between Tikva’s life with her family in America and her Lithuanian and Israeli past. It follows and reenacts her life through documentation, letters and photographs which come together to present this emotional and hopeful story.
An inspiring sports film, and an intimate and illuminating look at the Tet Tel Aviv high school basketball team’s quest for a national championship. The film focuses on one charismatic 16-year-old who bears a striking resemblance to the Israeli basketball star, Moti Aroesti. Nothing works for him in love and on court. Until the end of the film…
