Two women, an Israeli and a Palestinian, are trying to build a business partnership. Brought together by a shared business acumen and knowledge of the logistics industry, the two combine forces to help Palestinian businessmen navigate the everyday absurdities of Israeli control of the West Bank. But while they help their clients to overcome the obstacles of bureaucracy, who will help them overcome their own disputes?
The 1967 ‘Six-Day’ war ended with Israel’s decisive victory; conquering Jerusalem, Gaza, Sinai and the West Bank. It is a war portrayed, to this day, as a righteous undertaking – a radiant emblem of Jewish pride. One week after the war, a group of young kibbutzniks, led by renowned author Amos Oz, recorded intimate conversations with soldiers returning from the battlefield. The recording revealed an honest look at the moment Israel turned from David to Goliath. The Israeli army censored the recordings, allowing the kibbutzniks to publish only a fragment of the conversations. ‘Censored Voices’ reveals the original recordings for the first time.
An estimated Israeli 20,000 have moved to Germany’s capital in the last few years. Attracted by its cosmopolitan and international atmosphere, Berlin has become a magnet for young Israelis – and the three characters at the center of this film are no expectation. More than 100 years ago Simon and Rosa Adler came to Berlin from Galicia to fulfil their dream of a free and successful life. This egg-merchant family’s apartment is now lovingly restored by three young Israelis. Along with the filmmaker they examine the complex connection to the history of Germany while turning the apartment into a space for discussion and encounters with both the present as well as the past.
Twelve-year-old Mussa doesn’t speak, and no knows why. As African refugees, he and his parents have been living in Tel Aviv’s worst neighborhood for the past six years. In a strange stroke of luck, however, he is bussed to an uptown school every day. Leaving behind addicts and prostitutes each morning, he silently navigates to within an upscale world, befriending privileged kids with gestures, reading and writing in Hebrew, and making a considerable bond with his teacher Anna. Trying to fit in, he wordlessly connects with his classmates and friends, and bravely witnesses the random deportation of fellow African students. Little solace is found at home as his largely absent parents work during all hours, leaving him even more alone with his voiceless thoughts. When a series of unexpected crises hit, Mussa’s precarious place between two separate worlds is heartbreakingly revealed through this look at the human cost of immigration policy.
Gilles and Esther Alexandre struggle with the loss of two sons to suicide committed during their military service, as well as with the resulting condemnation by the religious kibbutz in which they live, which regards suicide as a sin and a source of shame and expects the grieving parents to swallow their pain. The Alexandres refuse to succumb: they launch a public campaign to reshape Jewish Orthodoxy’s discourse on suicide. Now their youngest son Binyamin is preparing to enter the army and wants their permission to join a combat unit. Loyal to his community’s standards, he implores his parents to find another way to commemorate his siblings. All of this poses a serious dilemma for the grieving parents, and forces them to reconsider the way that they confront their pain.
Rabbi David Buzaglo was the greatest Hebrew liturgical poet of the twentieth century. Born in Morocco in 1903, his literary output had a major impact on a community of hundreds of thousands of people. From his prolific period in the Diaspora to the years he spent in a ruptured Israel, Buzaglo’s poetry initiated an abrupt shift in Sephardic liturgical writing, but it also served as a vital link between the modern era and a tradition that dates back to Spanish Jewry’s Golden Age. But Buzaglo was more than just a great poet. The actions he took at seminal moments in history had a critical impact in shaping the identity of Maghreb Jews. This film is an intimate look at Buzaglo’s life and career, from its roots in the rich tradition of Hebrew poetry in Morocco through the liturgical revolution in Israel.
Twenty-five years after the death of actress Talia Shapira, her son begins a journey to retrace her life. He combs through the vast belongings his mother left behind – diaries, stories, films, audio tapes – as he peels his memories layer by layer, finally arriving at the most significant moment in their relationship: Talia’s last days.
Seventeen chapters of observation constitute an abstract and emotional mosaic, an intense investigation into the essence and meaning of a dialogue between mother and son – a dialogue that transcends words and time.
The unique way in which the director has chosen to describe this process of deciphering his mother’s life poignantly conveys both the need as well as the inherent difficulities to connect incidental moments of our lives into meaningful stories.
On Christmas Eve 2013, some 10,000 asylum seekers from Eritrea and Sudan gathered in Levinsky Park. From there they marched in an orderly fashion to Ha’Aliya Street, and continued across downtown Tel Aviv, until they reached Rabin Square, where they gathered around Yigal Tomarkin’s looming statue, “Holocaust and Rebirth.” It seemed as if every monument along the way, the names of every street and building added meaning to the demonstration, and transformed these hapless refugees into yet another link in the chain of Tel Aviv’s history.
Founded in a bomb shelter in the Katamon neighborhood of Jerusalem, the Jerusalem Boxing Club brings together hundreds of teens from all around the city. For many of these young people, the desire to excel and to win the national championship is nourished by the tough training and boundless love of Gershon Luxemburg, club manager and trainer, who claims that “nobody comes to box without a reason.” Jerusalem Boxing Club follows four teens from different walks of Israeli life as they learn from Gershon, call his club home, and compete together for the national title.
David Broza, the Israeli singer-songwriter, sets out to realize his dream of cooperation and dialog between Israelis and Palestinians through music. During 8 days and nights of joint creation in an East Jerusalem studio a hopeful message of equality and unity arises.
