Produced in celebration of the 100th anniversary of Tel Aviv, the two-part film Tel Aviv-Jaffa explores the rich and complex history of Tel Aviv and Jaffa.
Archives
180 Degrees to Jerusalem
Everything is going great for the director: he inherited the benefits of a generation of New York Jews who turned their backs on their religious pasts and re-defined themselves in America. But when his ex-patriate Israeli hustler pal Shimon walks into the trendy Kabbalah Center in Beverly Hills one day and walks out newly-religious – with a one-way ticket to a yeshiva in Jerusalem in hand – the director’s world is turned upside down.
Following Shimon to Israel, he moves through different spiritual and religious communities investigating and wondering if everyone – not just Shimon and Madonna – has lost his mind.
A General’s Story
Lone Samaritan
As a tiny sect constantly in danger of extinction, the Samaritans have very harsh rules about assimilation. After Sophie Tzdaka and her three sisters left the community, one after the other, the family became subject to terrible physical and mental harassment by sect members.
Director Barak Heymann (“Bridge over the Wadi”, “Dancing Alfonso”) follows Sophie, who is the youngest daughter as well as a TV personality, on a journey to her family’s open wounds in an attempt to understand who the real victim of their shattered home was.
Lone Samaritan is a touching father-daughter journey, which raises universal issues of belonging, faith and identity, and forces its heroes to confront the difficult isolation of those who seek a personal path within a closed tribal world.
100 Days in Green
Addicts
Based on a true event, the film tells the story of an innocent young girl who abuses drugs and alcohol until her tragic death. Stories like this happen in Israel on a daily basis.
Aisha
Aisha, 96, drags a pail around to help her walk. In her ripe old age, she virtually walks to the old chicken coop in her yard “on all fours”. Booba the “adolescent” goat, is a substitute for Aisha’s deceased beloved husband and for her 11 children who rarely visit. As years go by, the animals provide Aisha the only reason to live. On the backdrop of the spectacular landscapes of Yavniel, Aisha lives on the foothills of the Atlas Mountains in her heart, refusing to uproot the tradition of her childhood landscape as opposed to her children who grew up to be “Israelis”.
Amos and Tahina
The story of Amos Gottleib, a shell-shocked veteran from the Yom Kippur War.
A Treasure in Auschwitz
A young student, Yariv Nornberg, hears from an elderly vendor a fantastic story about a Jewish treasure buried in Polish soil. His curiosity is aroused when he learns of the location of the hiding place – next to the infamous Auschwitz extermination camp. During the next 5 years, Yariv pursues these lost religious artifacts. For him they embody his own perished family and guide his acceptance of the Polish people, usually regarded by Jews as collaborators and anti-Semites.
Yariv manages to organize a unique archaeological excavation to unearth the treasure. But as the digging progresses, it becomes apparent that the synagogue’s soil conceals a 60-year-old sinister secret and Yariv and his crew begin to lose hope.
Until one morning a shovel hits a metallic object in one of the ditches…
The search and excavation for the treasure translates within the film to a succession of poignant metaphors – to the Jewish existence in Poland and its annihilation, to the possibility of a dialog between the younger generations and above all – to the growing sentiment that only 60 years have gone by and already WW2 and it’s greatest nightmare – the Holocaust – is tragically transforming into an archaeological exhibit…
Back and Forth
Made up of four short films, all of which are directed by Bedouin directors in their debut as film makers, this unique film is an unprecedented authentic self-portrait of current life in Bedouin society. Portraying the struggle for progress that in many ways is held back by the traditions of the nomadic past.
