The film creates a daring first exposure on the way parents, rabbis, teachers, pedagogues and therapists within the Orthodox Hasidic Jewish Community educating their male children from infancy to adolescence, to avoid spilling their sperm. They target them to keep their seed only after marriage with a female for the purpose of fertilization. “Sacred Sperm” penetrates into one of the most suppressed hidden issues in the Orthodox Hasidic Jewish Community – a Taboo. Throughout the film we follow the emotional and theological struggle of the director who is trying to find a proper way as a father to explain his teenager son logically why he should keep this major Mitzvah (commandment) which perceived by many as unreasonable and seems impossible to fulfill
America’s favorite sport is spreading to Israel and bringing together a diverse cast of characters. Israeli Jews, Muslims and Christians as well as Americans living in Israel, and religious settlers all playing together, shows how sports can be a unifier in a complex, multifaceted society.
The story of an Israeli pediatric cardiologist sent to Africa to perform lifesaving operations in Tanzania, where every day five children die from heart conditions. Dr. Akiva Tamir and his team examine hundreds of children, of which only a handful can receive the treatment which will save their lives. When 6 year-old Julius arrives to the clinic in critical condition, Dr. Tamir is forced to choose whether to operate on the child, who has very little chances of surviving. Dr. Tamir and his team take the viewers on an emotional rollercoaster as they deal with the most serious question of who to treat and who will be left to die. The experienced physicians find it hard to detach from the emotional bond they share with their small patients. “A Heartbeat Away” is a riveting human drama, swinging on the pendulum between science and faith, hope and despair, life and death. In its center, human doctors who have been thrust to the position of Gods in the midst of Africa.
The film portrays the story of Safaa Dabour, a religious Muslim from Nazareth, struggling to fulfill her dream of personal independence and to establish a cinematheque in Nazareth, the first of its kind for the Arab population in Israel. Safaa’s father and husband both died while she was still a young mother of two boys and she chose to take charge of her own fate and establish the cinematheque.
A new and previously unseen viewpoint on Yitzhak Rabin – his own. Beginning with his childhood in Tel-Aviv, we follow him through his teen years at the Kaddouri Agricultural High School, his early days in the Palmach, his military career in the IDF as commanding officer and later Chief-of-Staff, and his political career as a diplomat, Prime Minister, opposition leader, Minister of Defense, and Prime Minister once more.
This powerful film follows several Israeli and Palestinian teachers over the course of an academic year. It asks: How do the Palestinian, Israeli Arab, and Israeli Jewish educational systems teach the history of their peoples? By observing teachers, the film shows us their exchanges and confrontations with students as they transmit the values of religion, politics, and nationalism in the classroom. In Teaching Ignorance, educators from all sides of the conflict debate their peoples’ official curriculum, wrestling with is restrictions. This film offers an intimate glimpse into the profound and long-lasting effect that the Israeli/Palestinian conflict transmits to the next generation.
This beautifully shot documentary offers a rare glimpse into the unique community of the African-Hebrew Israelites.
Once she realizes her death is imminent, Liora, a 54 years old woman, decides to organize her departure from life with no compromises. As a doctor of philosophy in Biology and a medical researcher, she treats her upcoming death as if it was a scientific project. She creates a “Finalize and Overlap” folder in her computer, in where she lists all the tasks she wants to accomplish before her approaching death. This ‘project’ would mostly affect her close-ones remaining in the following days, months and years after she’s gone. Is it possible to plan the unpredictable? Can facing death be also a vivid experience?
Colliding Dreams recounts the dramatic history of one of the most controversial, and urgently relevant political ideologies of the modern era. The century-old conflict in the Middle East continues to play a central role in world politics. And yet, amidst this fierce, often-lethal controversy, the Zionist idea of a homeland for Jews in the land of ancient Israel remains little understood and its meanings often distorted. Colliding Dreams addresses that void with a gripping exploration of Zionism’s meaning, history and future. Told through the remarkable lives and voices of Jews and Palestinians living in the Middle East today, Colliding Dreams weaves together past and present, ideas and passions, wars and peace talks, brilliant minds with the voices of ordinary citizens to develop a film portrait of unprecedented depth and sensitivity.
