Amos Gitai

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Ahasverus, king of Persia and Media, puts aside Vashti and makes Esther his queen, choosing her among maidens in a kingdom stretching from India to Ethiopia. Esther, using information from Mordecai, her uncle and patron, saves the king from assassination. Haman, the king’s favorite, is miffed when Mordecai won’t bow to him, so he orders death to all Jews in the kingdom, under the seal of the king. Esther pleads for her people, and Mordecai is in turn given license to make his own edict under the king’s seal. Mordecai loses sight of his original intention, and bloody murder ensues. Purim annually celebrates the story. At the end of the film, the actors comment.Read More »

On a tramway that connects several of Jerusalem’s neighborhoods from East to West, a mosaic of people from different religious and ethnic backgrounds are brought together.Read More »

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Young journalist Yael visits a small community of outcasts, Jews and Arabs, who live together in a forgotten enclave at the “border” between Jaffa and Bat Yam, in Israel. She discovers a range of characters far removed from the usual clichés. Their relation to time is different than that of the city around them. In this dilapidated and fragile place, there is a possibility of coexistence.Read More »

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Rivka is happily married to Meir, but they remain childless. The yeshiva’s rabbi, who is Meir’s father, wants Meir to divorce Rivka. Rivka’s sister, Malka, is in love with Yakov, a Jew shunned by the yeshiva as too secular. The rabbi arranges Malka’s marriage to Yossef, whose agitation when fulfilling religious duties approaches the grotesque. Can the sisters sort out their hearts’ desires?Read More »

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A slice of life – day after day – in Haifa, where Moshe and Didi’s marriage is on the rocks, affairs are casual, and Moshe’s angst about health, his parents, sex, communication, and business are pervasive and existential. Moshe’s mother is Jewish, his father an Arab; his father may or may not sell ancestral land; his wife and mistress have lovers, one is a close friend; much of Moshe’s surroundings seem under construction or in renovation. A cousin watches a security monitor without comment. Is there allegory in this portrait of an anxious Israeli approaching middle age?Read More »

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Laila In Haifa is set over one fateful night in a club in the port town of Haifa and explores the interweaving stories of five women. The film aims to present a snapshot of contemporary life in one of the last remaining spaces where Israelis and Palestinians come together to engage in face-to-face relationships.Read More »

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A young couple marry in France in the 1940s and the film follows the arc of their marriage over the next decade. As France recovers from the trauma of the war, the wife finds herself increasingly caught up in acquiring material possessions while the husband prefers a more traditional lifestyle.Read More »

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With an ensemble cast of both Israeli and Palestinian actors, “Laila in Haifa” explores the interweaving stories of five women set over one night in a club in the port town of Haifa. Laced with wry humor, Amos Gitai presents a candid snapshot of contemporary life in one of the last remaining spaces where Israelis and Palestinians come together to engage in face‐to‐face relationships.Read More »

1. House
At a stone quarry above Hebron, Arab stonecutters work without explosives to cut away slabs shipped to cities to build houses. We visit a site in an old Arab quarter of Jerusalem where Palestinian laborers are enlarging a house for a Jewish family that had been an Arab family’s home until 1948. We meet the house’s present owner, a Jewish professional. We meet a stonemason at work on the addition; he talks about his hatred of Jews. We meet an older man who had built the original house, and we meet the physician who had lived in the house until he and his family evacuated it. He explains why they left. History, class, labor, and attitude on display at a construction site.Read More »