Yigal is a divorced taxi driver who remains in close contact with his ex-wife and her new husband, in order to be close to his son. His personal dream is to visit Paris, but he is terrified of flying, even though it’s only a five hour flight from Tel Aviv. Picking up his son from afternoon choir practice, Yigal slowly and tentatively becomes emotionally involved with his son’s music teacher, an immigrant from Russia. At first glance, the two seem to be from different worlds—while Yigal is an uneducated taxi driver, the music teacher is worldly and educated. Nonetheless, they enjoy spending time together and a gentle and sweet relationship develops between the two opposites, which begins to grow more and more complex.
This sharp, often hilarious, satire that became the most successful film in Israeli history, is about new immigrants Sallah and his family, who are left in a shack near their promised apartment and are abandoned for months. A Yemenite Jewish family that was flown to Israel during “Operation Magic Carpet”—a clandestine operation that flew 49,000 Yemenite Jews to Israel the year after the state was formed—is forced to move to a government settlement camp. The patriarch of the family, portrayed by Chaim Topol, tries to make money and get better housing, in a country that can barely provide for its own and is in the midst absorbing hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from Arab countries. This hilarious portrayal of immigrants in Israel won a Golden Globe Award and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, putting Israel on the international film stage for the first time.
In this comedy set at the dawn of monotheism, God tries to recruit tough negotiator Abraham as his first customer. Old Abraham refuses unless God rescues his nephew, Lot, from Sodom, about to be obliterated due to its residents’ never-ending sins. Yet as God sends his angels to rescue Sodom, they discover that scruples are of no consequence when things get rough, and Lot’s wife redefines the meaning of “opportunism”. Will Lot escape the world’s most nefarious city? Or does God have a different plan in mind?
See more about This is Sodom at the Israel Film Center
Alex is a thirteen-year-old boy who is about to celebrate his Bar Mitzvah. Alex has typical Polish parents who work hard to make ends meet. On account of their difficult economic situation, they are compelled to share their apartment with a Persian tenant named Faruk that tries to fight his baldness by means of different creams. But when Alex falls in love with the new girl in his class, Mimi, his aunt Lola arrives in Israel from Poland to search for lost love. Alex falls for his aunt and she on her part gives him more than just maternal love. This film is notable for its careful reconstruction of the ’50s, known as the Austerity period in Israel.
In this satirical cult-classic, a Reserves unit in the Israel-controlled Sinai is less than five miles from the Egyptian front lines. However, the Israelis are hardly concerned with the Egyptians, as half of the Reserve-niks are just happy to get away from their homes and essentially go camping in uniform, while the other half goes crazy in hilarious fashion. When one of the Israelis mistakenly wanders across the lines and is captured by an Egyptian patrol, a madcap rescue mission is hatched. Add to that some oil prospecting, a stowaway girlfriend, and an officer in need of some female attention, and all the ingredients for an enjoyable romp are there. Can Reserves duty in Israel (or anywhere) really be this fun?
This offbeat musical directed by Avi Nesher follows a dozen members of the military entertainment troupe, whose mission is to entertain the Israeli Army following the Six Day War in 1967. Although the performers are not at the front lines, they, too, suffer tensions, learning to get along, making and breaking romances—all while competing to become the best performer in the troupe and to receive coveted television coverage.
A notorious Casanova, Zidane happily leads a life unlike that of his two friends Omer and Uri who endure the agony of commitment—until a beautiful Colombian woman from Zidane’s past pulls him into the romantic fray. Now, as the three men attempt to decipher the mysteries of women, they’re forever reminded that love frequently offers up equal doses of happiness and misery in this lighthearted Israeli comedy.
Two Israeli car dealers, Shmuel and Siso, invest five thousand American dollars into a vintage 1985 Lincoln Continental Limousine that they plan to sell in Germany for fifty grand. But when they take it there, they run into problems with the customs police, who are suspicious of Middle Easterners with a huge American gas guzzler. The routine search causes Shmuel to experience a disturbing hallucination about WWII Germany and the Nazis his parents fled from some sixty years earlier. And their adventure in Germany turns into a struggle just to make it out safely, as the echoes of the past catch up with them.
Arik, a teenage boy growing up in Haifa in 1968, gets a job working for Yankele Bride, a matchmaker. Yankele, a mysterious Holocaust survivor, has an office in back of a movie theater that shows only love stories, run by a family of Romanian little people in the seedy area by the port. Yankele introduces Arik to a new world, built on the ruins of an old one. As Arik begins to learn the mysteries of the human heart through his work with Yankele, he falls in love with Tamara, his friend Beni’s cousin. Tamara has just returned from America and is full of talk of women’s rights, free love, and rock and roll. The disparate parts of Arik’s life collide in unexpected, often funny and very moving ways as he lives through a summer that changes him forever. Avi Nesher’s mixes comedy with drama as it tells a coming-of-age story unlike any you’ve ever seen before.
