Local film prizes announced

Leading animator and director Dudu Shalita also received a Lifetime Achievement Award.

By HANNAH BROWN
Avi Nesher (photo credit: IMDB.COM)
Avi Nesher
(photo credit: IMDB.COM)
The Culture and Sport Ministry announced the 12 winners of the 2018 Film Art Prize and they include director Avi Nesher, who won the Lifetime Achievement Prize.
The panel of judges called Nesher “one of the leaders of Israeli cinema for over four decades, from classic films to the biggest blockbusters of the last decade.” His first film, the classic The Troupe (Ha Lahaka), is still widely shown after 40 years, and his most recent film, The Other Story, has broken box-office records and will be released internationally in 2019.
Nesher, who has been critical of Culture and Sport Minister Miri Regev’s attempts to dictate and censor artistic content, said, “I think this is proof that Israel is still a democracy.”
The awards were judged by a panel of film experts that included Dr. Noa Regev, the CEO of the Jerusalem Cinematheque, and Yehuda Stav, the movie critic of the Yediot Aharonot newspaper.
Leading animator and director Dudu Shalita also received a Lifetime Achievement Award.
Several filmmakers were honored for their creativity: Shlomi Elkabetz, who with his late sister, actress/director Ronit Elkabetz, directed a trio of films about a Moroccan family; Tomer Heymann, a prolific documentary director whose films include Mr. Gaga, and whose latest award-winning film, Jonathan Agassi Saved My Life, about a gay porn film star, has been shown around the world; Yair Lev, a documentary director whose recent film, You Only Die Twice, won the Audience Award at the DocAviv Film Festival; Talya Lavie, whose 2014 film, Zero Motivation, about female soldiers in the army, was a huge hit and won the top feature film prize at the Tribeca Film Festival; Ibtisam Mara’ana Menuhin, whose 2014 documentary, Write Down, I Am an Arab, tells the life story of poet Mahmoud Darwish; and Netalie Braun, a documentary director whose 2017 film, Hope I’m in the Frame, won a Special Honorable Mention at DocAviv.
Four emerging directors – Yair Agmon, Tamar Baruch, Kobi Mizrahi and Boaz Frankel – won a prize to encourage young talent.
Each prize carries a cash award of NIS 50,000 (approximately $13,000).