A young, orthodox Jewish woman is alienated from her Jerusalem community and drawn into the world of spirit. Surrounded by dark sounds of the “Other Side,” she moves into remote and increasingly desolate regions of Arab lands. Her journey, like a mystical quest through her own inner landscapes, culminates in her return to Jerusalem. There, indelibly marked, she confronts her deeper loneliness and a devastating sense of exile.Read More »
Set in the Mea Sherim quarter of Jerusalem, an enclave of the ultra-Orthodox, Kadosh explores a hermetic world almost never seen on the screen. Here, for ten years, the pious Rivka (Yael Abecassis) has devoted herself to her husband Meir (Yoram Hattab), but their marriage remains childless. Presumed barren, she is rejected by her community, which prizes children above all else.
The story that follows relates the harrowing fate of Rivka, and also here beloved sister Malka (Meital Barda), in love with a young man who has fled the community to lead a secular life.Read More »
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This sweet-natured if somewhat bizarre examination of teenage angst, Israeli-style, proves yet again what a dearth of original ideas seems to plague American cinema; watching this freewheeling, occasionally surreal, study of a young girl with Cassandra-like prophetic powers, is an example of wholly original filmmaking, for better or worse. If it is occasionally uneven in tone, it is just as bracingly refreshing in that you’ve probably never seen anything quite like it before.Read More »
Loosely inspired by Dostoevsky’s CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, ‘DISSOLUTION’ combines an almost surreal fairy-tale energy with brutal black and white realism to explore the condition of violence which permeates contemporary Israeli society. Shot in Jaffa-the predominantly Arab area of Tel Aviv- the movie follows the moral collapse and first glimmer of redemption of a young Israeli Jew, played brilliantly by non-actor, Didi Fire. This is a deeply personal work about one man’s inner journey, but can also be read as an allegory about Israel’s moral responsibility…as well as a portrayal of male violence towards a devalued feminine.Read More »
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Playoff tells the story of legendary Israeli basketball coach Ralph Klein. He became a national hero, when he made Maccabi Tel Aviv into European Champions in the late Seventies, one of Israel’s first great international sporting successes. But Max became a national traitor equally fast, when he then accepted the against-all-odds job of turning the totally hopeless West-German basketball team – of all people! – into European winners. Max always maintains that Germany – where he was born before the war – means nothing to him, and that training their national team is just another job on his path to NBA glory. But things aren’t as simple as he refuses to speak German to the young players. The only person he seems to be able to relate to is a Turkish immigrant woman Deniz, and her cheeky teenage daughter Sema. Max just about falls in love with Deniz – and does succeed in reinventing the Germans as European champions. When he discovers what happened to his own family in the 1940s – it is …Read More »
In an anxious and isolated world, paralyzed by the fear of the pandemic, one woman is determined to get a kiss — lips touching lips — from the Star of her dreams.Read More »
The story of a soccer team, respectable families, a corrupt night club owner, and a young lad to guide all to a happy ending.Read More »
In the midst of the ever-fraught Israeli-Palestinian political landscape, two women, one Israeli and one Palestinian, attempt the seemingly impossible: to build a business together. Fighting against societal and family pressure, anti-normalization currents and a chauvinistic, male-dominated industry, the two combine forces to create a logistics company which helps Palestinian businessmen to navigate the everyday absurdities of Israeli control of the West Bank. But while they help their clients to overcome the obstacles of Israeli occupation, the divisions between them threaten to tear their partnership apart. Can the bond between them overcome the impossible?Read More »
This was the first movie produced in Israel. It deals with the outbreak of hostilities during the war for independence in 1947. The message of this film was the sadness and stupidity of people killing each other and how “it’s always the old who lead us to war and only the young who die…” (Phil Ochs)Read More »