An Israeli auto worker desperately tries to convince his son to go to college. One day, he mistakes his son’s L.S.D pills for his daily medicine and a crazy adventure ensues.
Archives
Rage and Glory
The ostensible focus of this film by Avi Nesher is the Jewish resistance movement in Palestine in 1942 when the Brits still held colonial power in the region. A “Stern Gang” (Jewish resistance) cell is set to take revenge on a cruel British officer who has condemned one of their members to death. Unfortunately, weak characterization and a flawed, uneven plot (certain plot developments are simply forgotten) undermine this basically valid concept.
400 Miles to Freedom
FOUR HUNDRED MILES TO FREEDOM is the story of co-director Avishai Mekonenâ’s search to remember and reconcile what happened to him at age 10 in 1984, when he was kidnapped by slave traffickers in Sudan. Throughout his life-long journey from Ethiopia to Sudan, Israel, and finally America, his fundamental identity is challenged: What does it mean when others insist that you can’t be who you know you are? His search for answers leads him to other African, Asian and Latino Jews, and together they discover what it takes to heal a broken past and to overcome the invisibility and the questioning of one’s identity.
10 Weitzman Street
A short film that portrays a Russian family arriving in Israel, looking for their new house as the sirens signaling a missile attack go off. Since they do not speak the language, and do not know what the sirens mean, the family tries to find safety with an Israeli family, but have trouble communicating.
Bus Station
Two women, Arab and Jew meet at a bus stop in Jerusalem after a trip to the market. When their bags of tomatoes get confused they begin to understand the similarities and differences of their worlds.
Testimony
An Israeli Army officer remembers… A Palestinian remembers as well. This film is a voyage into the collective memory; a voyage rooted in stories of daily life.
Palestinian testimonies collected after the second Intifada revealed a harsh reality that, for Israelis, had always belonged to “them”, to the “others” – the Palestinians. And then, a few years later, the previously taboo accounts of Israeli officers who served during the Intifada began to emerge.
Memories of violence, of suffering, of humiliation. Of course, these stories matched. Israeli and Palestinian want to tell their stories each from their own point of view, as victim or victor, without seeing or acknowledging the reality of the other. But they are a single narrative. While these tales of terrible injustice are performed by Israeli actors, Shlomi Elkabetz’s film connects and unites both sides.
Alice
Alice, 38, spends her days sleeping. Working nights at a rehabilitation center provides her an accessible excuse that conceals fatigue and emotional apathy. Yigal, Alice’s husband, feels lonely and tormented by her chilly attitude, while his pent up anger gradually heightens. Eli, her 9 year old son, is desperate for her love.The rehabilitation center houses and treats thirty young women who have suffered emotional crises. Alice prefers as little communication as possible with the girls and performs only the basic demands of her job: handing out medication, supervising meals and overseeing shower time. After lights out, in her small room in the staff area, Alice meets Yoel, her lover. On the narrow single bed, a passion for another kind of life — for what might have been — is born. The girls’ volcanic emotional world reflects how desolate Alice’s life is in contrast. Thus, she cannot remain on the sidelines for too long. The confrontations of a dominant young woman on the one hand and the dependence of another, hurl her into a power triangle that will have devastating consequences.
A Beautiful Valley
Hanna Mendelssohn, an eighty-year-old widow, is a proud member of the kibbutz she helped found. She believes strongly in the values of social equality and cooperation upon which the kibbutz was created. Her world disintegrates as the privatization of the kibbutz forces her into retirement, and after years of devotion and hard work, she finds herself useless. In addition, she has to watch the kibbutz turn into a community in which everyone is concerned for his or her own wellbeing. She strives to continue to live her life as she used to, but reality slaps her in the face over and over again. When all her hopes are diminished, she realizes that friendship still exists in the kibbutz and though things will never be the same, something new can flourish.
A Strange Course of Events
Trying to overcome his difficult emotional state, Shaul, a solitary divorced man,goes to Haifa to confront his father.
Hello, Goodbye
When they move to Israel to explore their Jewish heritage and revive their failing marriage, fifty-something French emigres Alain and Gisele Gaash arrive in Tel Aviv to find their luggage lost, their apartment gone, and Alain’s new job taken.
