While filming his father revisiting his childhood city of Mumbai, India, Israeli director Erez Laufer finds himself caught in the worst terror attack in the history of the city. As the drama of the terrorist takeover of Chabad House in Mumbai unfolds, the Laufer family recounts how they found refuge there in the 1940s after fleeing the Nazis.
Past and present collide as the family history is echoed in a contemporary war, and a little-known story emerges of the Jewish refugees who found a safe haven in Mumbai during World War II. Rafting to Bombay is the story of how 5 year old Nahum and his mother escaped the Nazis in Poland, crossed Europe by train and sailed on a raft on the Tigris River until they reached the exotic and fascinating India of monkeys, elephants and Rajas. But Nahum’s childhood experience, which is remembered as an enchanting fantasy, was in reality, a chilling story of a last minute escape.
During the protest of summer 2011, we met the homeless – some suffering from PTSD, others victims of sexual assault, domestic violence, mental illnesses, sex workers and drug addicts – people who had nowhere to go when their tent camp was destroyed.
Bum’s Go Home exposes the suffering – and in certain events even death – caused by the
blind bureaucracy and our determination not to see.
In 1935, Max Shorenstein left his position as Chief Rabbi of Copenhagen to fulfill a longtime dream: to build a zoo in Tel Aviv. Against all odds, the Tel Aviv Zoo became one of the city’s greatest attractions. Yet envy, greed, and corruption eventually saw Shorenstein banished from the paradise he built. A tale of a city raised from sand to become an international, cultural, and financial hub a century later, and the price that was paid for this exponential growth.
Mini-series
“Moshe Dayan was radioactive,” says his grandson, Sa’ar, as he tries to explain how throughout Dayan’s life and decades after his death, his family still struggles with the large shadow cast by one of the most interesting and enigmatic characters in Israel’s history. The series follows five generations of the Dayan family—“The Israeli Kennedys”—whose story mirrors that of Israel itself. They have played an essential part in the critical milestones in the life of the state and tell its story in an intimate, scandalous, and fascinating manner.
The story of a remarkable athlete who captured the spirit of a nation, and how he ultimately triumphed despite the odds. In the summer of 1976, Aulcie Perry was spotted by a scout for Maccabi Tel Aviv while playing basketball in Harlem, and was signed immediately. Just a year later, Perry, who took the Israeli basketball team to their first European championship, started dating supermodel Tami Ben Ami, converted to Judaism, and became one of Israel’s biggest athletes. But not all was well behind the scenes.
Grierson award-winning director Iris Zaki enters the heart of Tekoa, an Israeli settlement in the West-Bank,and sits down to talk to the locals. Though fearful at first of the left-wing invader, settlers from various backgrounds gradually open up to her. Their honest, surprising and sometimes funny conversations offer a fresh take on Israeli reality from both sides of the Green Line.
During the 1920s, Café Nagler was the hottest place in Berlin. The director embarks on a journey to find out what’s left of the legendary café owned by her family. After discovering that family myths don’t always match historical facts, she’ll re-create her family’s past together with her Berlin peers.
On the night of March 5, 2002, a terrorist opened fire on diners in a Tel Aviv restaurant. Druze policeman Salim Barakat bravely stopped him, but was killed by the terrorist. For years, Jamal, Salim’s brother, has been attending police ceremonies in commemoration of his brother. Suspecting they may be withholding information, he sets out on a quest to find out who killed him. A story of a bereaved man facing the Israeli security establishment and the State of Israel.
A fascinating story of bereavement and mysticism, FOG tells of the quest to unravel the fate of a missing soldier. First Sergeant Mu’in Halabi disappeared at the beginning of the Yom Kippur War during an abortive IDF attempt to conquer Mount Hermon from the Syrians in October 1973. Two weeks later the IDF announced that Mu’in’s body had been found. A casket was buried in Mu’in’s hometown, the Druze village of Daliat el-Carmel. A month after the battle for the Hermon, a child was born in the Galilean village of Mrar. At the age of four, this child declared that he was the reincarnation of Mu’in, and, indeed, was able to relate almost everything about him. But in 1985 inhabitants of Daliat el-Carmel testified to having heard Mu’in speak on the Syrian State Radio. Veteran newsman, Rafik Halabi set out on a journey into time, memory, the Druze religion, and harsh Israeli realities in an attempt to uncover what lies behind this multi-layered story or, put more directly, whether Mu’in Halabi is alive
Sayed Kashua, writer, scriptwriter, and popular columnist. An Arab in the Jewish State, he doesn’t really belong to any side.
