Discoveries from Israel World Cinema

An Israeli commissioned officer confronts his own hard-line policy when transferring a prisoner.

A documentary about the Vacation From War Program where Israeli and Palestinian youth meet.

An intimate report from Israel's periphery. A group of young dancers, whose members are immigrants, is trying to compete in the break-dancing World Championship in Germany. The competition is the highlight of their dreams as dancers, but as we watch them prepare, we encounter a world of crisis and alienation. Mixer, 27, is supporting his family and trying to help his younger brothers, who still live with their alcoholic mom. Potter, 21, is in the army now; he still dreams of dancing, but has no one to help him care for his mother, who is ill. And yet, despite the hardships, these bold dancers confront reality head-on, because desperation is a luxury that they can hardly afford.

A drama about the survival a child, Srulik Friedman, who was five when the Second World War broke out. At the age of seven he lost his mother in the Warsaw ghetto, and since it alone in the world under a false identity: York Strniak Polish Christian who does not remember his identity as a Jew

Out presents a domination/ submission scene set in a mundane living room. The increasing pain prompts the sub to spew out not only cries of pleasure and pain, but also sentences. The scene thus connotes both confessions under torture, and rituals of exorcism. The utterances of the demon who speaks through the sub are all quotes of Avigdor Lieberman, one of the most extreme right wing politicians in Israel. The ritual is framed by two scenes. A preceding interview with the two participants seems at the beginning to be a straightforward documentary, but transforms into an exposition of the narrative premise by which one is possessed, the other an exorcist. The final musical scene is a song set to the words of the Russian poet Esenin’s Letter to Mother. Executed as a one-shot, the song is a direct, if twisted, homage to the final scene of another film that deals with radical sexuality and politics: Dusan Makavejev’s WR, The Mystery of the Organism.

An old lifeguard arrives every day for work, when in fact the swimming pool he guards has been empty for years. One day, an unexpected guest appears out of nowhere, filling him with doubts about his everyday reality.

Tamar, an ultra-Orthodox Israeli girl, is examined because she is no longer a virgin. An autobiographical story, a portrait of a community, of a religion, of a shared blindness.

When the inner world of Layla meets reality, her fantasy, of being accepted as a woman is being shaken by Jaffa's night.

Itamar Rose tries to discover the recipe for YouTube success. In his own attempt to go viral, the Israeli satirical activist and ineffective content creator comes up against gatekeepers and power monopolies. With humour and caustic wit, he helps us discover how Youtube crafts the dreams of an entire generation and silences the voices of millions.

Not a great deal of archival material about Wilfrid Israel has survived but, with the aid of photographs, a few documents, eyewitness interviews, and archival material relating to the rise of the Nazis, Yonatan Nir and his colleagues have created a fascinating picture of a man who was driven by his determination to save as many lives as possible. He saw the writing on the wall long before the great majority of German Jews and decided to use his great wealth for the rescue of as many people as possible. For example, he provided the finance for the creation of a children's settlement in Palestine, helped hundreds of his employees to emigrate (paying them two years' wages!), and not only inspired the Kindertransport movement but supported the operation financially.

Shlomo who discovers in his son's Assaf room, women's clothing and accessories, decides to 'teach the boy a lesson'. When Assaf returns to his parents' home on a rainy night from a party, his attempts to enter home fail. His father, with the silent consent of his mother, locked the door. At present, 4 years later, Gallia turns to an investigation agency to help her find her son Assaf and bring him to Shlomo, his father who is dying of cancer. One night, at a night club in Tel Aviv, Assaf is seen performing as a beautiful transgender lady singer who goes by the name of Anna. After a few days a private nurse turns up at Shlomo's room at the hospital, sent as she claims by the insurance agency to assist Shlomo. The nurse is Anna (his son Assaf) and she manages to conquer Shlomo's heart by her charming personality and her special attitude toward life.

A young violinist finds himself in a scarring relationship with his orchestra conductor. He seeks solace through a twisted intimacy with another girl.

Ariel Dukeman is a teenage boy on his way to fight his first thai boxing tournament. With a lot of hard training and the help of his friends, he just might become... Ramat Yishai's Tiger.

After a twelve-year separation from her son and from the city of her dreams, Liza travels to St. Petersburg to visit them both. The purpose of her trip is to convince Leonid to return with her to Israel, but an insurmountable barrier stands in her way, in Israel Leonid is waiting for a prison.

Matan Peretz with part one of his new special about his childhood, his younger sister, and how it was being a religious teenager.

A couple on the beach discuss their relationship. They reminisce about how wonderful things once were and find themselves wondering whether that was indeed the case, whilst at the same time also dreading the future. At the same time, a second couple – two elderly men whom we meet, both live entirely in the past whilst dreading the present.

Figure-Ground is an unorthodox exploration of the bizarre reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: an associative compilation of found footage, composed entirely of excerpts from YouTube videos of the beach of Tel Aviv and the hills and valleys of the West Bank. As bathers hurriedly seek shelter when the siren warns of missiles, soldiers on the other side clash with protesting Palestinians, and a bulldozer goes about its demolition work. An Israeli settler shows off his grapes, while elsewhere a Palestinian describes how his orchard was destroyed. Dogs harass a flock of sheep, dogs play on the beach. At times, protesters confront each other with Israeli and Palestinian flags. In this energetic and apparently intuitive collage, two parallel realities full of staggering contrasts are juxtaposed, yet they are also inextricably linked. And not only because the poppies on the coast look just like the flowers growing in the hills.

10 o'clock, Saturday morning. A group of elderly women and men carry plastic lawn chairs across the Mount Herzl National Cemetery in Jerusalem. In the shade of an old pine tree, they sit down, in a circle and discuss matters sublime and elevated. For over two decades, the "Mt. Herzl Academy has held its weekly meeting at this cemetery. Seated between the graves of the nation's dignitaries, they debate the history of modern philosophy, read poetry, eat lunch and determine the fate of the Jewish nation. Director Tali Shemesh has been following the "Academy" for the last 5 years, focusing on two members: Minia, the director's grandmother, and Lena, her great aunt. The film unravels the jagged, intense, almost impossible relationship between these two extremely different women, who each bereaved of the man she loved remain bound together by history and Fate.

An immigrant teenage girl with feathers on her body, is torn between the need to belong and her own identity.

At the border between the earthly and the otherworldly sits an old watchman, observing a fly. His thoughts are interrupted by a strange young man who asks, “How do I get to heaven?” What follows is an absurd, at times comical and unsettling dialogue filled with mistrust and irony. The watchman, bound by routine, faces something beyond logic. The young man, without a ticket but full of conviction, insists heaven awaits him. In the quiet, mysterious ending, the young man vanishes, leaving only a white feather — and a question: what was that? A short animated parable about boundaries, misunderstanding, and the mystery of crossing worlds, with absurdist humor in the spirit of Kharms or Kafka.

Yohay Sponder with a Standup special on how he went to Europe to fight the BDS movement using standup

Every year, thousands of Israeli men leave their families to spend Rosh Hashanah where Rabbi Nachman is buried. After Yair and his wife endured a personal tragedy, he decided that he needed to join this annual pilgrimage.

WATCH THE FILM HERE: https://vimeo.com/205672099

Dan Gilman's traumatic childhood destined him for musical fame, yet the crescendo of his destiny reaches far beyond any stage.

Abed A-Salim is the Mukhtar of the Gypsy community in East Jerusalem. His family has been typing requests for visitors at the Israel Ministry of Interior Affairs for three generations.

In the empty city of Tel Aviv during the pandemic two strangers cross paths. Their small flirtation hits the most graceful of pandemic humor notes and ends with a satisfying (for those who are bloodthirsty) twist.

A strange awkward relationship develops between Or, a 30-year-old wheelchair user after an injury, and her new physiotherapist that brings new breeze of desire to her daily routine rehabilitation at her mother’s house.

The Israeli Defence Force operation "Cast Lead" in Gaza wasn't covered by the media due to military embargo. For the first time, Israeli soldiers who took part in the conflict in 2009 speak out about their actions.

They survived the war. Now they have to survive the aftermath. A routine interview with a fallen soldier's mother turns into a bloody fight for survival.

Gal is a girl whose only desire is to be a man. She feels like a man inside and expresses herself defiantly. Her dissonance between mind and body is expressed throughout the film. The film is told through the eyes of Gal, who films and documents everything in her life without any censorship. Gal meets Shelly, a straight girl who initially does not respond to her advances. Slowly, the two become closer, and an intimate bond develops between them. Gal tries to move up a level with Shelly and wants to express herself in bed as a man in a way she knows and feels safe in, and Shelly refuses to accept this way. Gal has difficulty with Shelly’s lack of acceptance and reacts in an extreme way.

After surviving the bicycle accident that killed his best friend, a young man struggling with alcohol addiction becomes convinced that his friend is still by his side, guiding him as he continues to spiral downward. When a session with his psychologist reveals that the friend exists only in his imagination, he is forced to choose between confronting the devastating truth—or escaping reality one final, dangerous time.

In a fleeting romance between Ela and Gaia, desire wraps around wounds like rope on bare skin. They share a one-time, intimate encounter. Before Ela can catch her breath, Gaia is gone leaving her bound — to memory, to an unfinished moment, to the question: what now? From the void, an inner struggle begins — between control and surrender, between loss and self-discovery. Ela's loneliness shifts, from aching to awakening.

The film unfolds the story of Terry, a clumsy and violent troll, haunted by his past and looking for redemption for his soul.

The term Bedouin is derived from the Arabic word for desert, badia; meaning a Bedouin is a desert dweller. They are extraordinary people, their connection to mother nature is exemplary, and their history speaks for itself. Bedouin’s trace there ancestry all the way back to Prophet Ismael, the firstborn son of prophet Abraham. This documentary is filmed in the birth land of their forefather Ishmael and gives insight to life before, during and after the 1948 war, shedding light on tribal history, identity and culture.

Yonatan, an ultra-Orthodox young man protesting against conscription into the IDF, offering his perspective on the yeshiva, the conscription, and socks.

An experimental film as part of a journey of three not-so-ordinary people who are going to discover a new world and try to figure out where their place is in this world. Immigrants and disabled. The film raises questions about a sense of belonging, identity, immigration, family, and all those things that make up the word “home.”

The line between documentary and narrative filmmaking is blurred in this film by director, Asher Tlalim. In the aftermath of Israel’s devastating and deeply traumatic 1973 Yom Kippur War, Tlalim shines a light on post-war Israeli reality through the story of a widow, portrayed by the director’s then-wife, Miri Tlalim, who is carrying the child of her partner who had died in combat. The widow’s storyline intertwines with that of the camera crew shadowing her and led by director, Asher Tlalim. Interwoven with both storylines is a range of archival footage which captures and highlights Israeli reality along the paper-thin fault line between the famously back-to-back Israeli Memorial and Independence Day.

The Berlinale DAAD Short Prize winning film.

"Salma" is a young ambitious Palestinian woman who is trying to find her way towards independence, live her life and break free from her abusive brother "Walid" and her conservative family. "Salma" moves out from her family's house and starts studying at the university. Alas, she experiences contradictions between her way of life and her family's mentality and faces opposition. The film is based on a true story and attempts to demonstrate the issue of domestic violence that many women suffer from through the eyes of "Salma".

Yehuda Poliker, one of Israel’s musical giants – in a retrospective meeting of his own life – stares calmly into the camera; sometimes with longing, sometimes with regret, but mostly lovingly. He watches rare archival footage, some of which are never before seen family home-videos. At times, he joins in on the guitar, accompanying that same stuttering, insecure young man looking back at him from the screen, or his parents singing Greek songs, and sometimes, he just sits silently and reminisces. In conversation between then and now, in conversation with his friend for the past 40 years, Eti Aneta Segev, images from Poliker’s life join one another, while his touching music plays in the background. The images spark memories that transport us freely between the different junctures of his life.

The remarkable story of Dr. Mohamed Helmy, the Muslim Egyptian doctor who became the only Arab recognized by Israel as a ‘Righteous Among the Nations.’ A proud humanist who freely criticized the Nazi regime, Helmy risked his life to save Anna Boros, a Jewish girl he knew, by dressing her in a hijab and pretending she was his niece. Shot on location in Berlin, the film incorporates rare photographs and archival footage of Berlin in the 1930s and ‘40s.

An animated film about the world travel of a flying dog and friends.

David Avidan was perhaps most known as one of Israel’s leading poets of the 1950s and ‘60s however, at the same time, he was also dabbling in quite a bit of experimental filmmaking. Avidan described Split as "a film about the need to get rid of film," in which he explores the line between visual media and the written word.

Shahar is an unemployed filmmaker. His father, Sleiman, suggests that Shahar make a film about the Jewish Brigade, in which he served during WWII. Shahar becomes enthusiastic after discovering that his father may have impregnated two Dutch women while abroad and decides to make the film hoping to find his father’s lost offspring. Together they set out along the trail of the Jewish Brigade, beginning in Israel, through Italy and Germany, and ending in the Netherlands with a surprising discovery.

Salman Schocken was the King of department stores in Germany. Before WWII, he owned 22 department stores with 6,000 employees. He possessed a unique collection of 60,000 rare books in German and Hebrew and founded a modern, Jewish publishing house. He was the lifelong supporter of Shmuel Yosef Agnon and he owned the Haaretz newspaper which still survives on the border of consensus. He supported secular, Jewish culture and identified with humanist, liberal Judaism, a relic of 19th century Europe. Today, in an age of unscrupulous market economy and militant Judaism, Salman Schocken’s ways point to an alternative, perhaps not entirely lost.

A documentary focusing on the stories of three Israeli women seeking a divorce through religious courts.

September, and an Israeli couple moves into a building located above a supermarket in the Meguro district of Tokyo. The apartment window overlooks a temple adjacent to a funeral home and a busy intersection. It’s raining and hot, and the air conditioner in apartment 905 can not beat the humidity, so this couple goes down and starts walking. And so every morning for the next three months, the two of them go down the elevator of the building, out into the street, and walk in ever-widening circles, talking and watching, and sometimes he takes out a small pocket camera, directing…

For the coming year when Shmulik must let his land lie fallow, he decides to disregard the Rabbinate law and sells his land to Changrong, his most senior Thai worker. Certain that he has made the greatest play of his life, Shmulik awakens the following day only to discover his once calm reality shattered. Shocked, he will do anything to return it to the way it was.

Dr. Rudy was an iconic psycho-guru and founder of “The Rudy Psychoanalytic Institute” – the largest in Israel during the 70’s. His controversial therapy methods forced him to fight for his reputation and the institute’s survival. His demise raises questions regarding abuse of power and moral boundaries.

The film’s protagonist is Zion Cohen (Arik Ohana), a boy who grew up in a disadvantaged neighborhood in Beit She’an and was sent at the age of eight by his grandmother—with the help of a social worker—to a foster family in Haifa in the late 1970s. The foster family is the Sharonis—a well-off family consisting of the mother (Tchia Danon), a psychologist by profession, the father Elimelech (Roberto Pollak), and their young son Nir (Roie Bar-Natan), who do everything in their power to support Zion. The film depicts the various difficulties Zion encounters in his new life as a foster child and his feeling of not belonging; he often tries to return to his childhood neighborhood and his friends, something his grandmother and the social worker try to keep him from doing.

How does the world look through the eyes of a 6-year-old child? Summer Nights offers a window into a child’s world: his fears, his desires, his way of thinking. It is a journey into the subconscious of an innocent and ingenuous child, as he falls asleep and drifts into the depths of his own mind.

The story of a disappointed love between men. Hillel is a young Jerusalemite who surprisingly discovers that he is about to lose the man he loves to a woman. Without being able to do anything, he has to find a way to pick himself up and move on.

Osher, Michelle and Eitan were evicted from their homes as children and transferred to foster care. These are supportive and stable families, but with a specified expiration date - when the boy / girl turns 18. The biological families are in a state of dysfunction and are absent. The film accompanies the three towards the end of the last year as part of the foster care and the first year of independence. The personal relationship that develops between them provides them with a supportive, stable and shaky framework at the same time, similar to that between the drowning person and the straw. Without the protective patronage of the foster care framework that has loosened or expired completely, they are exposed and swayed to the wind when past traumas burned into their minds may erupt and crush at once what has been built, or seemed to have been built, with much toil and torment.

Surrounded by the prying eyes of a patriarchal society, a lonely housewife plunges into an internal exploration of gender and sexuality in 20th century Morocco. Tamou’s true identity as a trans man begins to unfold.

Manya, newly repatriated from Russia in accordance with the Israeli Law of Return, meets Erez, a native-born Israeli Jew. She soon learns that to be with Erez she must undergo an Orthodox conversion (known as Giyur), even though she and her family already identify as Jewish. The film follows her as she reevaluates her love and redefines her Jewish identity.

In 2007, the human rights organisation B’tselem launched a project consisting of providing video cameras and training to Palestinian volunteers in the West Bank to document their lives under Israeli occupation. Made up of many short films, Of Land and Bread is a film of painful eloquence.