Four kids, while returning from a field trip, set off on a rescue mission after one of them, gifted with a telepathic ear, discerns distant cries for help from two teenagers in a crash. They find themselves journeying through a military firing range, a mysterious herd of ostriches, and a kibbutz where they meet both friends and foes. Will they be able to save the teenagers in trouble?
It is the height of summer and the reality show “His Heart’s Choice” is just about to launch its third season. Zacky Reibenbach, the show’s creator, knows that without a really good gimmick, there is no way he will repeat the success of the previous two seasons. Then he remembers his film student, Yehuda Konitz. Yehuda has been documenting the rehabilitation of his friend Eitan for the past three years after the latter went blind under strange circumstances during his military service. His unique rehabilitation process was developed by Yael, Eitan’s personal trainer and Yehuda’s girlfriend. Yael is Eitan’s eyes, and with her he is a true phenomenon–exactly what Reibenbach is looking for. Yet when Yehuda accepts Reibenbach’s offer of fifty grand to help his movie, in exchange for putting “the phenomenon and the trainer” on the show, he finds himself drawn into Reibenbach’s deceptions, as well as the shady, glitzy world of reality television, and on a downward spiral towards a dead end.
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.
Slava and his friends, a group of young Russian immigrants, are out of place, frustrated and alone in the harsh setting of a small desert town in Southern Israel. Victor, an older immigrant who used to be a soccer coach, suggests they set up a soccer team to compete in the local tournament. The soccer field becomes their home away from home, the place where they can be themselves, and where they can prove their worth: to themselves, to each other, and most importantly, to the new world in which they find themselves.
Menachem is a Yeshivah student and newly made commander of his own IDF unit. His dynamic right-wing spiritual leader, Rabbi Meltzer, whose West Bank Yeshivah Menachem attends, is the father of his love Michal. Although Menachem is a beloved student and commander, the rabbi has not chosen him to be the suitor for his daughter. Instead, the bone will be thrown to Pini, a brilliant Yeshivah student. But the rabbi’s daughter won’t allow herself to be some prize. And when she scorns Pini, Pini begins hatching his his own secret plot. Complicating matters are the Shin Bet’s caustic distrust of non-secular Israelis… and a nationalist plot that is brewing to blow up the Temple Mount.
See more about Time of Favor at the Israel Film Center
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.
Bruriah and her husband Rabbi Meir lived in the second century A.D., a time when the Rabbis declared “women are light-minded.” Bruriah, a most learned and intelligent woman, mocked their statement. In order to prove their justification, Rabbi Meir sent one of his students to seduce her. Bruriah was seduced and when she discovered that it had been planned by her husband, she died by suicide.
In the present day, a woman who also bears the name Bruriah deals with childhood trauma: a life of boycott and excommunication that was imposed on her following a book written by her father about the same act. Bruriah embarks on a journey to find the one copy of the book that may have survived. Her husband opposes the search because Bruriah’s desire to locate the book poses a threat to the lifestyle he has built for his family.
