Israeli documentary films
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- DirectorDoron TsabariRino ZrorSoccer mania hits Beit She'an, a small working-class Israeli town near the Jordanian border, when the local team prepares for their last crucial game of the season, against the rich, national champions from Haifa, exacerbating conflicts between rich and poor, small town and big city, and minorities and the ruling class.
- DirectorNoa MaimanOrna Ben-Dor NivHomecoming is a journey of immigration, identity and national belonging. Na-to, Auto and German are three young Israeli born children whose parents are immigrant workers from three different continents. Our intention was to see through their eyes the possible outcome of being forced to return to their parent's homeland. Our three protagonists were lucky to be legalized in 2006, but approximately another 800 children and youth just like them are still facing possible deportation. When we started the film, we assumed Homecoming refers to their return to their parent's homeland. During the work, we realized that homecoming meant only one thing for the three of them: the return home to Israel.
- DirectorGavriel BibliowiczStarsModi Bar-OnAaron GevaDudu GevaThe story of the Israeli artist and comic-maker Dudu Geva.
- DirectorRan TalAn intimate portrait of the children who were part of Israel's first kibbutzim.
- DirectorDror MorehStarsAmi AyalonAvraham ShalomAvi DichterA documentary featuring interviews with all surviving former heads of Shin Bet, the Israeli security agency whose activities and membership are closely held state secrets.
- DirectorMor LoushyStarsAmos OzCENSORED VOICES combines raw original recordings of Israeli soldiers recounting their fears and doubts following Israel's 1967 Six-Day War, using archival newsreel footage as a stark reminder of how far the region remains from peace.
- DirectorGavriel BibliowiczAnat ZeltzerStarsModi Bar-OnRona KenanThe film is looking for the parallel between the events of Tel Hai incident (1921) to the Second Lebanon War (2006) event near the cemetery of Kfar Giladi.
- DirectorYoav ShamirDocumentary filmmaker Yoav Shamir's depiction of the checkpoints that the Israel Defense Forces man in the Palestinian Authority.
- DirectorNitzan OfirTwo girls meet through digital educational project. Samar's father comes from the (Palestinian) Occupied Territories. Linor's family was evacuated from a Jewish settlement. Only 67 kilometers apart, yet an ideological gulf stands between them. The girls meet and an instant bond is struck. Nevertheless, reality overpowers the friendship.
- DirectorYair QedarStarsYona WallachA cinematic journey into the world of Yona Wallach, an Israeli poet, whose radical life and poetry ended with her death at an early age, leaving behind a myth and a trail of admirers. More than 25 years after her death, seven recorded tapes from her last interview, which were made with Helit Yeshurun, are discovered. In these tapes, Wallach confesses to her attraction to madness, her experiments with drugs, her relationship with god and about the dangers of writing. The film weaves her testimony with interviews, with rare archival footage, with her poems and with animation that revives Wallach's thoughts, images and visions.
- DirectorEyal Sagui BizaweSara TsifroniStarsAmr AbdulgalilMohamed Sherif HassanYusof MutaharThe Arab Movie brings to many Israelis the stars and the songs, the convoluted plots, and that fleeting moment when they shared the same cultural heroes as everyone else in the Middle East.
- DirectorErez LauferStarsYitzhak Rabin20 years after his assassination, Yitzhak Rabin himself tells his dramatic life story.
- DirectorRuth WalkA moving portrait of Israel Becker, a founder of the first professional Yiddish theatrical company in post-war Germany and writer and star of the 1946 autobiographic feature film Long is the Road (restored by NCJF), the first feature to portray the Holocaust from a Jewish point of view.
- DirectorDavid PerlovStarsDavid PerlovMira PerlovYael PerlovShot over a ten-year period, Diary is not only the political, professional, and personal diary of a man, but is a testimony on the turbulent reality of a war-torn country, Israel. In six chapters, Perlov travels to Tel Aviv, Paris, London, and finally to Brazil, where he was born. The film is also a family diary in which Perlov records the coming of age of his two daughters, Yael and Naomi.
- DirectorTomer HeymannJuliano Mer-KhamisRan TalA film project created by Jewish and Arab teenagers from Israel's outskirts, in collaboration with directors Juliano Mer-Khamis ('Arna's Children'), Ran Tal ('Children of The Sun') and Tomer Heymann ('Paper Dolls', 'I Shot My Love', 'The Queen Has No Crown'). The teenage directors from Israel's 'twilight zones', whose voice is rarely heard, got cameras and the guidance they needed in order to film their communities, their families and themselves.
- DirectorBarak HeymannTomer HeymannFor the first time in Israel, a group of Arab and Jewish parents decide to establish a conjoint bi-national, bi-lingual school inside an Arab village. The film follows the school's first year and portrays through the personal stories of its characters, how complicated and fragile is the attempt to create an environment of co-existence against the backdrop of the complicated reality around.
- DirectorTomer HeymannStarsCabra CasayIdan ReichelAvi Wogderess-VasaTomer Heymann followed Israeli pop/world-beat band The Idan Raichel Project on their 2006 concert tour to Ethiopia and emerged with a documentary that rollicks and rocks. The film, part lighthearted road trip, part examination of multiculturalism in Israel, is a close-up ride with the young Israeli-Ethiopian-Yemenite band members, who muse on the loss of their heritage and on their excitement as tourists embracing roots in Africa. Black Over White deftly explores their cultural ambivalence and their experience of racism back home in Israel. One of the musicians is reunited with his grandmother in Addis, music is made with rural villagers and in urban clubs, and in one poignant sequence, future immigrants to Israel meet the musicians. The culminating concert-a fusion of Middle Eastern multiethnic grooves-is a success and emotional high point, but for the band members, the meaning of home remains elusive.
- DirectorTomer HeymannStarsTomer HeymannZvi HeymannAndreas MerkSeventy years after his grandfather escapes from Nazi Germany to Palestine, Israeli documentary director Tomer Heymann returns to the country of his ancestors to present his film "Paper Dolls" at the Berlin International Film Festival, and there meets a man who will change his life. This 48-hour love affair, originating in Berghain Panorama Bar, develops into a significant relationship between Tomer and Andreas Merk, a German dancer. When Andreas decides to move to Tel-Aviv, he not only has to cope with a new partner, but to manage the complex realities of life in Israel and his personal connection to it as a German citizen. Tomer's mother, descendant of German immigrants was born and lived all her life in a small Israeli village, where she raised five sons. One by one, she watches her children leave the country she and her family helped to build, and now cannot help but try to influence the life of Tomer, the one son who remains. I SHOT MY LOVE tells a personal but universal love story and follows the triangular relationship between Tomer, his German boyfriend, and his intensely Israeli mother.
- DirectorRoy SherStarsHaris AlexiouMehtap DemirRoza EskenazyRoza Eskenazi sang the way she lived, with passion, fire and love. This is the story of three young musicians who embark on an exciting musical journey, to tell the story of Greece's best-loved rebetiko singer.
- DirectorYair ElazarStarsDavid Elazar30 years after the death of Lieutenant General David Elazar (Dado), his son, Yair, takes a journey in his footsteps. His aim is to penetrate the web of myths shrouding his father's memory; He wants to stop living in his shadow, and to overcome his anger at him, for always putting the Army first. As the journey advances, Yair comes to understand that his father did not differentiate the private from the public; The military was his life: a course of meteoric ascent ending with a painful downfall. After spending many months with his father in the editing room, Yair grows to understand his choices, and is finally able to say goodbye.
- DirectorYoel SharonMovie about the Yom Kippur War's traumatic, final battle, for the town of Suez.
- DirectorYariv MozerIn the summer of 2006, at the age of 28, I was suddenly drafted as a reserves soldier in the Second Lebanese War. Instinctively, I grabbed my video camera and thread a shoelace, securing it around my neck right next to my rifle. I said to myself this camera will be a tool with which to mediate between myself and the reality into which I was thrown - the reality of war. I was part of an artillery Regiment. As days went by, I understood that this war is not as it was planned. Mixed orders, more and more dead soldiers; mess and disorder came to be the words describing this war. And as long as this war evolved, bringing more chaos and destruction, I continued to use my camera and shoot. I film the faces of soldiers, exhausted and overwhelmed. I heard the soldier's desire to tell their story - to talk about what they have seen. The feelings were of a pointlessness war and a strong and clear failure. Months after the war ends, I was compelled to find the individuals who served with me. Those I followed during the war. Those I met accidentally while wandering, and whose faces and souls were burnt into my mind. They are my principal obsession and characters of the film. I followed them in their daily life. They recall the images of this war and how they currently relate to them. My characters and I went to this war naïve with a definite purpose. We woke up, shaken, in shock, with doubts and regrets. Each one of us, those who survived, paid a price.
- DirectorAdir HaruviStarsAlon Ben DavidA documentary that takes the testimony of people who were on duty on the day Ron Arad Captured.
- DirectorDavid BergmanJacques EhrlichHaim GouriHistorical documentary made up of footage and stills shot by the Nazis. A compilation of testimony from witnesses who appeared at the Eichmann trial provides a telling narrative.
- DirectorHila CohenOshri HayunA special relationship between Aisha, age 96, and her she goat Buba, in the background of failed relationships with her 11 children. As years go by, her animals provide Aisha the only reason to keep on living. On the backdrop of the spectacular landscapes of Yavniel, Aisha lives on the foothills of the Atlas Mountains in her heart, refusing to uproot the tradition of her childhood landscape, as opposed to her 11 children who grew up to be Israelis.
- DirectorKaren GoodmanKirk SimonIn the heart of Tel Aviv, there is an exceptional school where children from forty-eight different countries and diverse backgrounds come together to learn. Many of the students arrive at Bialik-Rogozin School fleeing poverty, political adversity and even genocide. Here, no child is a stranger. The film follows several students' struggle to acclimate to life in a new land while slowly opening up to share their stories of hardship and tragedy: Mohammed, a sixteen-year-old refugee from Darfur, witnessed the killing of his grandmother and father before escaping alone through Egypt to Israel. Having never been in a school before, his sharp mind and tremendous determination enable him to make up the years of study he never had. Johannes arrived at Bialik-Rogozin after spending most of his life in refugee camps across the Middle East. His father struggles to obtain a work visa while twelve-year-old Johannes struggles to adjust to attending school for the first time. After a slow start, his teachers realize that he is nearly blind in one eye and take him to an eye clinic. With his new glasses, before long, he is reading and writing - and helping other newcomers to adjust. After the murder of her mother, Esther and her father fled South Africa with nothing, in search of safety and peace of mind. At Bialik-Rogozin, they are welcomed with clothing, food and counsel on beginning a new life. Esther's teachers try to relieve the trauma of a nine-year-old girl who believes her mother will return. With tremendous effort and dedication, the school provides the support these children need to recover from their past. Together, the bond between teacher and student, and amongst the students themselves, enables them to create new lives in this exceptional community. Upon graduation, Mohammed provides the finest evidence of the school's ultimate success -- declaring his dream to return to Darfur and build a school for the children of the village he once fled.
- DirectorNirit AharoniThis film tells the story of a group of young women living on the street, casualties of heroin and prostitution. Robbed of their childhood, they now find themselves trapped in a spiral of addiction that too often leads to death. These stories offer answers to questions about my own past, as a child who was taken from her drug-addled mother, a prostitute, but more than that, just a girl.
- DirectorNitzan GiladyThe international World Pride event, planned for Jerusalem in 2006, is disrupted by orthodox Jews, evangelical Christians, and conservative Muslims, who are united by their dislike to LGBT events in the city they consider holy.
- DirectorAmichai ChassonBoaz FrankelBenjamin FreidenbergStarsZelda
- DirectorTomer HeymannA group of transgender and gay Filipinos people emigrate to Israel to take care of elderly religious Jewish men. On their one day off per week, they perform as drag performers in a group called the Paper Dolls. On the political level, it explores the perils of global immigration. In this case, after the second Intifada, the Israeli government unofficially opened its doors to illegal workers to replace the Palestinians who were no longer allowed in the country. As tensions with the Palestinians eased, the government changed its policy and began to forcibly deport these foreign guest workers with dramatic consequences for our characters. On the human level, the film is about people who are rejected by their own families for being gay or transgender and who emigrate and end up with jobs taking care of other people's parents who have been rejected by their own children because they are old, difficult, etc. They work grueling hours to send money back to the Philippines to support the families that have rejected them. As unbelievable as it may seem, these very different people (old religious Jews and transgender people from the Philippines) form very deep, quasi familial bonds.
- DirectorGalia OzDiscovery the works of Asher Feldman, an Israeli painter .
- DirectorAmit Goren
- DirectorRaphaël NadjariStarsNaftali AlterMohammad BakriHaim BouzagloThe first 1933 - 1978 starts with the Zionist movement and ends with the first re-visitation of that history. The second 1978 - 2005 starts at the beginning of the political wave until the more recent personal cinema. However chronological, both episodes cover most of the genres, themes and periods of Israeli cinema - from the beginning of the Zionist Mouvement to the most personal stories - from commercial to politically engaged directors, from the local to the universal. A HISTORY OF ISRAELI CINEMA tells the story of the building of a gaze on a society torn by ethnics, religious, and political conflicts. It attempts to understand, to denounce or to explore this complex subjects, always searching for the right ethic, the right form: to explore or transform its own definition and its place in the world.
- DirectorTali ShemeshStarsLena BarMinya RubinTali Shemesh10 oclock, 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. As death decimates the group that has given meaning to their lives, the film explores the conflicts between Lena and Minia, and the family secrets that haunt them. The result is a poignant, intimate, sometimes hilarious portrait of the Holocaust generation like youve never seen it before.
- DirectorJonathan BentovimStarsTalia ShapiraThrough seventeen decisively varying styles of observation, director Yoni Bentovim delves into the essence and meaning of discourse between mother and son.
- DirectorTamar Tal-AnatiA photo shop owner and her grandson join forces to save the shop and the nearly one million negatives that document Israel's defining moments.
- DirectorNathan AxelrodJoel SilbergUri ZoharStarsOri LevyTopol
- DirectorAvida LivnyStarsEhud BanaiYuval BanaiMani BejaranoEhud Banai, now Israel's biggest singer-songwriter, got in the music business when he was over thirty. This is the story of his music, his friends, and his musical inspirations - from the beginning.
- DirectorOrna Ben-Dor NivStarsYehuda PolikerYa'ackov GiladYael BirenbaumDocumentary about the life experience of the Holocaust generation and its own second generation - children born in Israel, who grew up in the shadow of their parents' memories of the Holocaust.
- DirectorShlomi EldarWith the help of a prominent Israeli journalist, Precious Life chronicles the struggle of an Israeli pediatrician and a Palestinian mother to get treatment for her baby, who suffers from an incurable genetic disease. Each must face their most profound biases as they inch towards a possible friendship in an impossible reality.
- DirectorTomer HeymannStarsAliza RajanAn encounter between the mythological Israeli actress Aliza Rozen and a young film director
- DirectorTomer HeymannStarsTomer HeymannPoignant meditation on family, loss, and the mental maps of homelessness. The film navigates the intimate lives of 5 brothers and their mother, over the course of a decade, through the pains of exile and the joys of family bonding. Exploring the politics of belonging, displacement, and homosexuality, the film examines the hard decisions one Israeli family has to make and the intractable bonds that unite them in the face of complicated life choices.
- DirectorLaura BialisStarsMicha BitonRobby ElmaliahKnesiyat HaSechelHalf a mile from the Gaza border, rockets rain down on Sderot. But underground, musicians in this besieged Israeli town continue to create a sound all their own.
- DirectorRobby ElmaliahStarsKmimish UzanThe challenges of immigration are exposed in this touching film where we follow a family who moves to Israel in 2006 from the Tunisian Island of Djerba.
- DirectorArnon GoldfingerStarsMichael AdlerYaron AmitAvrham BarkaiAs a documentarian cleans out the flat that belonged to his grandparents--both immigrants from Nazi Germany--he uncovers clues pointing to a complicated, shocking story.
- DirectorAvshalom KatzStarsAhmed Yousef
- DirectorAri DavidovichStarsAnael BlumenthalDoron TavoryAsnat ZibilTwo poets, a father and a daughter, in a dangerous game of words. The mysterious life and death of Tirza Atar, daughter of Nathan Alterman, Israel's national poet.
- DirectorAmos GitaiStarsAmos GitaiIn 1982, Amos Gitai and a film crew travel around the occupied territories of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank as tensions mount, leading to the Israeli army's invasion of Lebanon. Gitai contrasts Palestinian refugee camps with new Zionist settlements; he goads Israeli soldiers with his camera, he visits a strawberry field where Palestinian women work and the home of Bassam Shak'a, the mayor of Nablus on the West Bank, who is under house arrest. He interviews a Palestinian wheat farmer and some protesting women. Gitai asks if there's a solution, can people live together? He gets various answers.
- DirectorTomer HeymannStarsOhad NaharinTzofia NaharinEliav NaharinMr. Gaga tells the story of Ohad Naharin, renowned choreographer and artistic director of the Batsheva Dance Company, an artistic genius who redefined the language of modern dance.
- DirectorYael HersonskiStarsAlexander BeyerRüdiger VoglerHanna AvrutzkiA film about an unfinished film which portrays the people behind and before the camera in the Warsaw Ghetto, exposing the extent of the cinematic manipulation forever changing the way we look at historic images.
- DirectorMacabit AbramsonAvner FaingulerntWar Tourism Journal at the border of Gaza during winter 2009 that picture an intimate portrait of Israel in a time of crisis. It explores the phenomenon of "war tourism" which flourished during the war on the Sderot-Gaza border, when people from all over the country swarmed in to observe the shelled Gaza.observation at the fissures in Israeli society, which ties military strength with Messianic beliefs. War ecstasy and the euphoria of power accompanying it are likened to the spectacle of the Corrida - the arena of a cruel struggle for life or death.
- DirectorMacabit AbramsonAvner FaingulerntIntimate fishermen's diary of Palestinian refugees and Israeli settlers - tough men from two hostile nations who maintain a delicate and fragile coexistence.
- DirectorMacabit AbramsonAvner FaingulerntStarsAlon AboutboulA journey of a woman in the Land of Israel, as she undergoes an intense relationship with a man whom she desperately longs for, as a metaphor for the vicious and inescapable circle of the relations between the matador and the bull in the Spanish Corrida.
- DirectorMacabit AbramsonAvner FaingulerntStarsEva Panic-NahirThe story of Eva, who has paid a heavy price in her personal life, when, in her Communist past, she had elected to abandon her only daughter, rather than betray the memory of her dead lover.
- DirectorRima EssaAdi HalfinNadav LapidEvery day is a perfect day for revolution. Every evening while watching television, we resolve to act. Every morning we realize that we did nothing. Can individual's actions influence reality? Five stories from both sides of the separation fence.
- DirectorAvi MograbiStarsShredi JabarinA documentary on the treatment of Palestianians by members of the Israeli army.
- DirectorAvi MograbiAn Israeli soldier describes his participation in covert revenge operations against Palestinians.
- DirectorAvi MograbiStarsIdo BergerGidi DarShahar DegalIn this Docu-Fiction, as Avi Mograbi calls his films, the filmmaker interweaves three narratives into one.
- DirectorYaron AmitaiErez TadmorStarsMeir BanaiArik EinsteinIsrael Gurion"All is Well by Me" chronicles the private and professional life of singer Josie Katz, who came to Israel from the US as a 19-year-old kibbutz volunteer and soon became an important player in the history of Israeli popular music. As her kibbutz service ended and she was planning her return home, Katz encountered songwriter/singer Shmulik Kraus. The two had a much-publicized affair and later married. Kraus and Katz, along with Arik Einstein, founded the musical trio, High Windows, which enjoyed great success in Israel and abroad. When the group broke up in the seventies, Kraus entered a difficult period of his life, moving between detention centers and mental hospitals. Josie was left to raise their two sons, Ben (now 31) and Shem (now 30). These days Josie is trying to pick-up the pieces of her musical career, as well as to come to terms with the ups and downs of her personal life. "All is Well by Me" tells her riveting story.
- DirectorSenyora Bar David
- DirectorMicha ShagrirTwo years after the Six Day War (1967), doctors at an Israeli hospital try to save the lives of an Arab terrorist and Israeli officer just brought in after a border clash.
- DirectorDavid PerlovStarsZeldaConsidered by many as one of the most poetic films ever produced in this country, and as a milestone in Israeli documentary cinema, In Jerusalem is composed of 10 engaged observations of the city, before it was united.
- DirectorDavid PerlovThe changes of life in kibbutz Tel-Katzir and its floundering population, that suffered from many Syrian attacks in the past and now experiences anxiety, following the progress in peace process that might bring back the Syrian army to watch over them from the Golan Heights.
- DirectorDavid PerlovStarsTopol
- DirectorRima EssaWhile fighting for her daughter's right to receive adequate treatment for her leukemia, Aisha - a Palestinian woman living in the West Bank, undergoes a process of empowerment. Suddenly, this battered woman, is no longer afraid to stand up to her husband, to her occupiers, to the authorities and to anyone's who is in the way of her daughter's path to health.
- DirectorDalia Mevorach
- DirectorDani DotanDalia MevorachDani was always a bad boy. Now he is looking for the reasons why in a house full of secrets that belongs to his mother, Archeologist Trude Dothan.
- DirectorDani DotanDalia MevorachStarsAris SanThe mysterious life of Aris San a Greek singer, who became a star in Israel, fell in the grip of the New York mafia and disappeared in Budapest.
- DirectorAvi AngelStanding near the Western Wall in Jerusalem Avner says: 'This is the moment when I claim victory over the Nazis'. Two brothers, three mothers - a saga shrouded in fog for almost six decades - the unique narrative of a voyage tracing the roots of a shadowy past. Brothers Avner and Itzik live in Israel. As toddlers, their lives were saved first by their aunt, later by another young woman. Their past included three women who would become their mothers. But all this remained hidden - even from close family and friends. Now 70 year-old, Itzik and Avner journey into that past, seeking their true identity to piece together the incredible story of their survival.
- DirectorChris MarkerStarsAliPère GauthierMonsieur KleinA documentary about the then only twelve year old country of Israel, caught amidst the tensions of the Middle East and the ongoing Cold War.
- DirectorDan ShadurStarsErvand AbrahamianShaul BakhashZahra EshraghiA documentary thriller describing the last days of the Israeli community in Tehran, on the eve of the Islamic Revolution in 1979. The director, whose family was in Tehran at the time, uses rare archive materials to illustrate how thousands of Israelis, who enjoyed unusual affinity with the Shah's regime, wake up one morning to find their paradise vanished.
- DirectorRoy WestlerStarsTerrence HowardShadya ZoabiShadya Zoabi, a charismatic 17-year-old karate world champion, strives to succeed on her own terms within her traditional Muslim village in northern Israel.
- DirectorDani DotanDalia Mevorach
- DirectorTsipi ReibenbachStarsFruma GrinbergYitzhak Grinberg
- DirectorAsher Tlalim
- DirectorRon HavilioDocumentary about the history of Jerusalem.
- DirectorDavid Benchetrit
- DirectorArnon GoldfingerStarsPesach BursteinLillian LuxMike BurstynA documentary on the life and career of Yiddish actor Pesach Burstein and his family.
- DirectorGoldberg AyalThree funerals, three generations, two wars and one boyfriend waiting in Tel Aviv. A troubling portrait of the filmmaker, a son to one of the founding families of Metula (a town on the northernmost Israeli border). Against the backdrop of a family dealing with illness and death, the film's protagonist is repeatedly called for reserve duty as a Tank Commander in the Israeli army. Through use of archive footage of events filmed over the course of a decade, the tragic-comic clash between the filmmaker and the habit of obedience unfolds.
- DirectorAsher Tlalim
- DirectorOri Inbar
- DirectorOri InbarDoron TsabariStarsReuven MillerBrenda BlethynNicolas CageThere is drastically more than meets the eye to curating a successful awards ceremony. The Academy Awards, widely known as one of the most sophisticated and historic of these institutions, is no exception.
- DirectorRan KozerWith the murders of over 50 gay men in the last 20 years Israel faces a serious problem. While many of the perpetrators have been caught and convicted on a case by case basis, this film looks at the underlying issues.
- DirectorYehuda KavehIn 1982, Israel embarked on a military campaign in Lebanon. Operation: Peace in the Galilee. The short campaign got out of hand and turned into a drawn out war - this movie tells the story, through the eyes of the fighters. Soldiers' letters, journals and conversations accompany combat scenes, life in the field, the Palestinian enemy in its fight against Israel, politicians and Israeli leaders'.
- DirectorErez LauferStarsMike BrantCarlosMichel Jourdan
- DirectorYael KatzirStarsEfratNoaRotemA groundbreaking documentary about Israeli women ready to take command in the Israeli army.
- DirectorYael Katzir"Mom died this morning. I have always craved her hugs and her approval, but it did not happen". The film begins right after the funeral of my mom, Ziona. We sit Shiva at my parents' home. My parents represented the melting pot of Tel Aviv: a Sabra and a Berliner physician, who barely escaped the Nazis in 1933. Suddenly, my sister Nurit, my brother Micha, and I, Yael, are orphans. I ask my son, Dan, to document the Shiva and beg him to be gentle and unobtrusive, but that is not his filming style. "Shiva on Mother" is a mourning journey unfolding through the different stages of grief, through the days of the Shiva. It begins with nostalgic stories about Ziona, but soon turns into a search for resolutions of past conflicts with her mother. In the back rooms of the house, the brother and sisters talk about painful issues regarding their relations with their parents. Anger, frustrations and doubts are expressed. Being exposed and fragile, her own children accuse Yael of the same things she accused her mother. At the end of the Shiva, Yael finds a letter that her mother wrote but never sent, saying how much she wanted to hug her. Only then does she achieve a sense of closure, and can relate to her mother with a new understanding.
- DirectorAmos GitaiCan a house be a metaphor for Arab-Jewish relations in Israel? Amos Gitai returns to the house in West Jerusalem he profiled in 1980. He interviews members of the Jewish families who live there, and he talks with the Arab family who lived in the house until 1948. They are now in East Jerusalem and pay a nearly furtive visit to the street in front of their old house. Gitai also interviews Palestinian laborers at work on renovations and excavating an old tunnel to the Holy Mount. What do people think of each other, what do they think of Israel, what do they think of co-existence? Do the current residents know the house's history?
- DirectorNissim MossekThe Israeli Air Force (IAF) is much more than a fighting machine; it is a central element of Israel's identity. This film includes exclusive access, to profile the people who make the IAF what it is today, and those who hope to carry it into the future. Learn what it takes to be a "top gun" pilot in the IAF and gain insights into the life and times of these incredible pilots.
- DirectorSimon HeseraStarsIssor ArrelEhud AvrielDavid Ben-Gurion
- DirectorYa'akov GrossThis historic document of Palestine during the tumultuous 1920s includes footage from three rare films by Ya'akov Ben Dov, the father of Hebrew cinema. Preserved in a joint project by the National Center for Jewish Film and the Israel Film Archive, these works include Return to Zion (1920-21), The Rebirth of a Nation (1923), and Romance of Palestine (1926). Considered lost for more than 70 years, the films depict the early builders of the Zionist vision who pioneered the Third Aliyah and the Fourth Aliyah and contain images of settlements and activities in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Rishon le Zion and Old Jaffa. From this rare archival footage, director and scholar Ya'akov Gross has created a vital and accessible look at a formative period in Israeli history whose legacy continues to influence Israeli politics today.
- DirectorLilly RivlinMargaret MurphyStarsMaha Abu Dayyah ShamasWedad Abu DayyehLily HabashCan You Hear Me? Israeli and Palestinian Women Fight for Peace is the first documentary film to explore in depth the role of Israeli and Palestinian women peace activists dealing with one of the world's oldest conflicts. Though prospects for peace have ebbed and flowed between Israelis and Palestinians, women peace activists have worked consistently to bring an end to the bloodshed that has brought so much anguish to both sides. No matter how desperate the political situation seem these women never stop communicating with each other. They come together in their bereavement over the loss of loved ones and to demand a better future for their children and grandchildren. There is bonding, there is friction, there are differences of opinion. But most of all it is a story about women who have hope and keep on trying to hear each other and do not give up their work for peace.
- DirectorAnat HalachmiStarsSubliminalTamer NafarYoav EliasiA documentary about two Israeli rap music performers, one Jewish (Kobi Shimoni, known as Subliminal) and the other Arab (Tamer Nafar, known as TN).
- DirectorAdi BarashRuthie ShatzStarsDuduNinoA look into the lives of teenage male prostitutes working the area known as the "Electricity Garden" in Tel Aviv.
- DirectorEran Torbiner"Matzpen" # the Israeli socialist organization, has never had more than a few dozen active members. Still, at the end of the sixties and beginning of the seventies, it was considered a real threat to the Israeli political and social consensus. Most of Matzpen's members were Israeli born, coming from the deep core of Israeli society. Their fight against Zionism and against the occupation, as well as their contacts with Palestinian and European left-wing activists, were the cause of threats, slander, as well as political and social isolation. The film touches on the main issues of the Zionist-Palestinian struggle, through the eyes of some of the organization's prominent figures, their ideas, opinions and activities, then and today.
- DirectorGil Lesnik
- DirectorAsher Tlalim
- DirectorAda UshpizStarsHannah ArendtJury AndruchowytschAharon AppelfeldA documentary about the life and work of Hannah Arendt, the prolific and unclassifiable thinker, political theorist, moral philosopher and polemicist, and with her encounter with the trial of Eichmann a high-ranking Nazi.
- DirectorYakobov ArturAttias SharonThe personal journey of Arthur Yakobov, an Israeli-Bukhari artist and painter, into the depths of his own family, a family from which he was expelled as a little child and never got to know. In an attempt to piece together the shreds of painful memories, Arthur exposes his family - a Bukhari immigrant family, conflicted and divided, that preserves the dynamics of violence, jealousy, and cruelty between its men, women and children as they struggle and fail to adjust to Israeli life. With open eyes, and out of a desire to reassemble the missing memory of his family, the reality that's revealed by the film works in direct opposition to this desire, disassembling the idea of "the family" so essential and central to Jewish tradition, as well as to the Bukhari Jews and to Israel as a whole in the year 2010.
- DirectorYael Katzir