A couple, Tamara and Alon meet each other in a hotel suite for a day full of fantasy, they are celebrating their 10th wedding anniversary and this is their routine celebration. But this year is different. Through this day secrets, lies, will be coming out while they are both living their sexual fantasy. As they go along through the revelation of secrets, infidelities and untold desires the experience becomes more and more painful for both of them.Read More »
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Ben and Raz are painstakingly pursuing their desire to have a child, and the migrant neighbourhood where this gay couple has set up their new flat is on the up. But a conflict over a newly planted tree in the city brings deep-seated prejudices to light.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 »
Filmed in one sequence shot of 81 minutes, this virtuosic film draws back the curtain on a moment in the life of a small community of outcasts, Jews and Arabs, who live together in a forgotten enclave surrounded by mass public housing near Jaffa. A young journalist (Yuval Scharf, intelligent and glamorous) visits them and discovers, among the dilapidated shacks and an orchard of lemon trees, a range of characters far removed from the usual cliches of the region. Compelling performances by Sarah Adler, Assi Levy, and Yussuf Abu-Warda shed light on private dreams and desires. From internationally acclaimed director Amos Gitai (Berlin Jerusalem NYJFF 1993, Kedma NYJFF 2003, Alila NYJFF 2004, News from Home / News from House NYJFF 2007).Read More »
In a dystopian future, the Israeli army keeps the population in check because of water scarcity but Saul Jordan, an activist journalist, finds out that it is an invention and tries with the help of a Palestinian tramp to spread the news from a small radio station improvised in the desert, inciting fellow countrymen to the resistance and the struggle for freedom. Wanted throughout the nation, the two during an escape take hostage to an army colonel and the group of his collaborators, including the sexy Liora (Alessandra Mussolini).Read More »
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 »