Discoveries from Israel World Cinema

The extraordinary story of three Hungarian-Jewish sisters who were raised in communist Budapest of the 1970s to become chess masters.

Ben arrives to his native Kibbutz and plans to ask his distant father Albert to help him recover a family apartment looted in WWII. But Albert has other plans... Completely drunk, he has bet that he could cross the country from north to south on a tractor in less than a week.

Jonathan (17) is a closeted bisexual, who reveals his sexual identity for the first time in a meeting with his good friend, Adam (17). Jonathan's father enters the room unexpectedly. Jonathan has to choose between his Dad and Adam.

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Tom is a shy and unpopular kid, who is often bullied. His insecurities lead him to fake stomach aches and seek the help of his neighbour friend, Dr. Gantz. His involvement in an unexpected accident and a misdose of a certain medicine leads Tom to activate 100% of his brain, making him exceptionally smart, alongside an unnerving crave of sweets. His newly acquired skills make him popular, but also lead him to be manipulated to commit crimes for an evil boss, named Bill Roshde.

Abigail is heavily pregnant, But something is missing. Terrified about the imminent birth, she kidnaps a comforting partner in crime for one afternoon.

Alienated from a society that no longer seems to have a place for them, two elderly ex-soldiers undertake a vigilante campaign against injustice and disrespect on the streets of Tel Aviv. (TIFF)

Since his boyfriend left him, Yotam hasn’t slept alone. He developed an obsession for dating apps and spends his nights in the arms of strangers. One day, he discovers he’s been infected with an insufferable skin disease and realizes he’s got no choice but to stop his way of living for a while. His journey into the midst of his first night alone will find him and his obsession in very dark and itchy places.

Michael is a 30 year-old playboy enjoying life in Tel Aviv. Everything changes, however, when he finds out about his ex girlfriend’s new relationship. Michael’s festering wounds drive him to absurd lengths to try and win her back.

A documentary on the life, works, and death of Hezy Leskly, a controversial homosexual, choreographer, multi-media artist, and poet who died of AIDS in 1994.

In a small car parked in a remote spot, two young men meet for a secret date. The outside world forces them to be a couple only within the car’s doors, sparking a playful pretend game — and dreams of another life, and its cost.

Tzika, a father to a newborn baby called Barak, is invested in the new telenovela, "Osher". The show depicts a mother and a child named "Osher", who is the same age as Barak, navigating the departure of her father and her poor life. Years later, when Osher grows up, she sets out to find her father, which leads to an encounter between her and Barak, blurring the lines between TV and real life.

Uri Zohar’s first film is a short experimental work based on an idea by Heinrich von Kleist. The film depicts the relationship between a marionette puppet and its operator, and the rebellion of the creature against its creator.

Under a very strict military curfew Salah, a grieving father, sets out on the road to cross the Israeli border carrying his dead son Omar in a duffel bag. Miri, a pregnant single woman, decides to help him out at all costs while fending off the terrible heat.

An intimate portrait following the mysterious life of Tamar Golan, who stood at the center of many of Israel’s foreign relations successes and operated behind the scenes of diplomacy. Yet her name remained absent from official historical records. Until now.

Yonatan Barak with a Stand-up comedy special about how a drug-induced trip to Amsterdam made him quit smoking cigarettes.

A small family has to evacuate their kibbutz due to war, but the grandfather is unwilling to leave.

"My Father My Lord" is an intimate and deeply disturbing story of the conflict between a father's love and his deep devotion to religion. A respected Orthodox Rabbi dotes on his only son but his religious strictures leave an emotional gap between the impish child and the stern father. When the father's all-consuming obsession with observing religious ritual inadvertently leads to tragedy, his previously subservient wife rages against both her husband and God. A dramatic retelling of the story of Abraham.

A film diary in which Perlov films the minutiae of his and his family's day-to-day life. From these small bits, he builds up a broad picture of life in Israel in the '70s and '80s.

A cinematic rock opera and an homage to teen films, adapted from the stage musical with the same name by Amit Ulman, scripted completely in Hebrew rhymes. Yoav, a teenage boy who lives with his single mother, who struggles to finance them, moves to a new city. He joins Magshimim High, where words hit harder than punches, and your rhyming skills determine the food chain. After the "class king" demolishes him in a rap battle, Yoav is determined to prove himself and win the heart of the "class queen", Maya. He encounters Hamorabi, a legendary former rapper who hides under the image of the school's kiosk cashier. With his help, Yoav turns from an outcast to the Star of the Battles. But as he climbs high, he draws apart from the friends who stood by his side, the girl who really saw him when no one else had, and the authenticity taught to him by Hamorabi. In the National Rap Championship, Yoav will have to choose between chasing the shining lights of fame or staying true to himself.

An Israeli car and a Palestinian car are stuck in traffic in front of a barricade at the entrance of Jerusalem, coming from the Dead Sea. Yuval and Mahmoud, both seven years old boys, find its much more fun to pass the time playing with one another. But when Mahmoud's father tries to cut into the other's lane, Yuval's father bumps into his car in an attempt to prevent him, and things start to get complicated. What began as a game becomes an outright battle over a plastic Batman doll.

Flash (1987) A couple becomes hostage when a frantic soldier takes over their house. This social drama depicts the state of the Israeli society following the devastating 1984 war.

In a city where everything is possible, a guy and a girl are looking for the impossible - a parking place. the story of an hour and a half of two strangers who met in a bar and want to spend the night together but cant find a parking place and thus become 'victims' of the situation and have to deal each with the other, the situation and himself.

This human drama centers around two loner Russian soldiers who are caught smuggling arms and consequently arrested. The two characters do not want to lose their honor as soldiers even though they have committed a crime considered unforgivable in military society and want go through an honorable military trial. The military is not at all concerned with their wishes, and pushes to get them tried as civilians. This causes conflicts that send the story towards an unexpected direction.

Despite accusations of institutionalized systemic Nazism by the Russian government and its allies, Ukraine’s diverse Jewish community remains among the country’s most passionate patriots. Alex Osmolovsky’s illuminating documentary follows Ukrainian Jews from various backgrounds as they reflect on their relationship to their homeland and share how their lives have changed since the Russian invasion. With scenes of soldiers in camouflage kippahs and a bris performed on the front lines, the film paints a striking portrait of one of the world's most resilient Jewish communities as it navigates its way through more than three years of war.

A couple has sex and shoots flies from a balcony.

Kamel, a Palestinian man in his 50s, suffers from autism and travels with his paralyzed sister to the Dead Sea to receive medical treatment in seawater in the hope that it will help him treat psoriasis that has spread through his body.

Anat, a single mother and a devoted literature primary school teacher, is impatiently waiting for her son’s discharge from the army. But exactly on the due date of his release, a soldier is kidnapped and a new war breaks out. The condition of her shell-shocked father, Ya'akov, starts to deteriorate as Ido calls to say that all discharges have been put on hold. The angst-ridden Anat tries to get him back home, appealing to the kindness of the commanding officers. Ido returns, but her spirit is broken when she discovers that discharges were not suspended - it was he who volunteered to fight. Their symbiotic relationship goes downhill, Ido returns to the border post and the battle flares up. Before his unit enters Lebanon, Anat, who feels trapped between her father and her son, decides to take matters into her own hands.

Two Israeli criminal families with Moroccan roots suffer the tragedies of their respective lives.

A Catholic priest discovers that he was born to Jewish parents

A detailed account of the Zini-Malkov story, being told by no other than themselves. A mockumentary that focuses on their relationship, success and creativity. Underground Ben Zini teams up with the rising pop-star Taylor Malkov in order to perform the show of their lives.

A large family travels through Israel by bus to attend a young man's gradution from army training. The film explores the sharp contrast between the expatriates' views of Israel and the reality.

A four-story building in the midst of a city. A bridge runs above it, busy with heavy traffic and passing trucks. Behind the leftmost window on the fourth floor is the residence of two brothers, a mother and a father. A family who perhaps have never had the right to exist.

The kindergarten children receive a gift from the kibbutzs shepherd a small lamb. A little girl named Michal feels a special connection to the lamb. During a special celebration, the lamb is given the name Pamonit and as a gift, it receives a red ribbon with a bell around its neck. One bright morning, the lamb disappears. Special search groups are organized, but without results. Time passes, but Michal cannot overcome her longing, and she continues her search in hopes of finding him.

A short children’s film based on the first children’s book by the author Amos Bar. Hillel loves tractors more than any other child on the kibbutz. A friend on the farm who understands the boy’s spirit gives him a ride on the tractor almost every morning on his way out to the fields. One day, during a trip with his friends, Hillel discovers that the tractor broke down in the middle of the field. He decides to separate from the group of children and sneak up to the tractor, which is standing alone, while the tractor driver goes to fix the oil pump. He sits on the tractor and plays with the levers. Soon enough, panic ensues as his friends, from a distance, hear the noise of the tractor in the field, which is moving on its own. After a dramatic chase, the tractor stops, and Hillel is saved. Hillel, who leaves the impression that he will be a successful farmer when he grows up, is forced to promise for now that he will not get on a tractor for the next 7 years.

An exploration of the moral and survival dilemmas in Auschwitz from the point of view of a deputy head of a block and a few of the prisoners from his block who survived the horrors of the camp, immigrated to Israel in the 40's and are still struggling to begin new life in the newborn state of Israel. Based on a true story.

There is a certain moment that takes place before falling asleep, a moment between waking and sleeping, some kind of dimension that exists between the two, it can feel like a quick and sudden fall into a bottomless pit or rather like a gentle sinking into a soft grass bed, either way this is the moment where the film begins the part before the dream itself, here we meet the dreamer.

An archival montage of late Israeli director and actress Ronit Elkabetz, as told through the radical collection of her extraordinary wardrobe. A cinematic essay about the power of cinema, the power of clothes, and one unforgettable woman standing for and embodying the deepest human desire for freedom and liberty.

Sara writes a harsh blog about the bleak lives of Haredi (Ultra-Orthodox) women. Shulamit is an independent photographer who documents violent incidents on segregated busses on which women are required to seat at the back. Both of them were banned by their communities because of their desire to live normal, unsuppressed lives. These young women operate entirely alone and pay a very high price for violating the number-one rule of Haredi society: "Never air a dirty laundry in public." As they expose the violence of Haredi fanatics, acting in the name of modesty, they are punished by persecution and vilification. What will happen to them when they can no longer bear being shunned by their own family and friends? Wich way will they choose? where will they go? Black Bus, Soreret, tells the story of their singlehanded and courageous attempts to document and lead a change in the Haredi Society from which they have fled.

Everyday life in Israel during the "Intifada": suicide-attacks, distresses, tensions. A director must present a new theater play but he just can't write a line. His partner, a documentary filmmaker, is preparing the portrait of a former soldier who opened a trade but went into bankruptcy. This man is ruined, his wife has left home, his son got exiled to Australia. The director, desperate, believes that hiring a private detective to follow his wife is gonna put some salt in his life. Without knowing it, the detective becomes the real director of the play which is getting written step by step.

Michal Bat-Adam films her life with her partner, Oscar-winning director Moshe Mizrahi, and their son Daniel. A story of their life walking on parallel paths, struggling to maintain their love and creative partnership even when the sea separates them.

An observation of Israeli society in the aftermath of the October 7 attack, tracing a society searching for meaning through rituals: memorials, protests, marches, and religion, while the recurring image of a devastated Gaza has itself become a ritual.

Rina and Tulik embark on an imaginary journey full of adventures and songs.

Olivia (12), just moved with her family from New York and arrives for her first day of school. She struggles to find her place within the hierarchy of her new school. Finding herself caught between the popular students and her shy classmate, Alem, Olivia must ultimately make a choice about who she is and how she will navigate her newfound circumstances.

In this monologue a legal theorist sets out to tackle the ways in which the Israeli military law in the occupied territories tackles the problems of circumscribing, defining, judging and punishing Palestinian children. The approach she tries is to imagine a listener removed in time and space. Her speech, however, lapses into musings on aging, illness and sexuality. A different cut of the monologue will be a part of a longer film entitled Kafka for Kids, but it can be experienced as an autonomous work.

A 12-year-old girl must complete a family history assignment for school. The boring task slowly becomes a sweeping drama embodying many secrets over three generations of one family, beginning before the Second World War and ending with the fall of the collective kibbutz idealism. In the vein of Arnon Goldfinger’s The Flat, this quiet and sensitively-constructed documentary explores a family’s resistance to excavate a buried painful past.

A girl with anger issues tries to get her best painting

Segev, a young man, reaches out to Avshalom, his estranged older brother who cut ties with the family many years ago, in order to inform him that their father is gravely ill. The meeting between the two brothers, who have never met before, launches the entire family into an emotional whirlwind, triggering a chain of events that is both humorous and tragic. As they confront death, longtime resentments, and long-buried family secrets that surface for the first time, the two brothers find themselves in a battle of emotions.

A story about Rafi and Tsipi - newlyweds leaving with their parents.

Two young boys are sitting on the stairs and playing ball. Then they perform a sexual act with a girl from the building. A friend of the boys watches everything happening from upstairs, several floors above them.

It's time to talk about where this relationship is going.

Twelve-year-old Mussa won't speak and no one knows why. He is an African refugee living in Tel Aviv, and for the past five years he's been bussed from his troubled neighborhood to an upscale private school. Moussa's Israeli classmates are his best friends, but he chooses to communicate with them only through gestures.

Yana is determined to leave her innocent days behind. Together with her sharp and shady friend Sheli, she sets out for an afternoon of mischief at the mall: in search of a blue movie, fast food, and male attention. What begins as a light-hearted adventure slowly derails into a series of borderline encounters with strangers - and an unexpected lesson in the praises of the arts of seduction.

Najwa, Nawal, and Siham, three Palestinian widows, live with their 11 children in a house on Shuhada Street in Hebron. Their house lies on the border; the façade is under Israeli occupation, the Palestinian Authority controls the back. At the entrance to the house is a military post; on the roof the Israeli army has placed a watch point over Palestinian Hebron. The three women, trapped in the middle and constantly surrounded by Israeli soldiers, carry on their difficult lives in a perverse situation: the occupation becomes a routine, the absurd becomes a given. This is the story of an occupation that extends to the staircase and the roof of the house, where it encounters poverty, loneliness, pain, but also the small joys of everyday life. This is an internal prison, the external one is the ongoing occupation.

After Daniel travelled for a long period in Europe, he is coming back to his childhood home, in a small village in Israel. He wants to find Lilah, the woman of his life. Lilah, a former ballet teacher, has been paralyzed on her bed for three years. Daniel is going to commit something unbelievable out of love. The film deals with the conflict between religious tradition and the freedom to choose your fate.

Tsili is a young girl caught in the middle of World War II. After her family is taken to a concentration camp, Tsili hides in the forest, free from hatred and men, until the arrival of Marek, a stranger who speaks to her in Yiddish.