The 27th Tel Aviv International Student Film Festival will explore the impact of Hamas’s October 7 massacre, as well as introduce an international competition for movies created with AI.
The festival, considered one of the most important festivals in the world for student films and short films, is produced and managed by film students of the Steve Tisch School of Film and Television at Tel Aviv University. It will take place from June 25 to July 2 at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque and other venues around the city.
The festival will feature over 100 short films from 20 countries, including France, South Korea, Denmark, India, Mexico, Romania, and Japan. This year, according to the organizers, a significant number of students submitted their films to the festival independently, despite the opposition of their schools to the filmmakers taking part in an Israeli festival.
What's happening at the Tel Aviv International Student Film Festival?
Normally, the schools would submit their students’ films to the festival directly. For example, the film Invocation by Lu Lu, a student at the London Film School, was submitted by its creators and accepted into the competition, against the school’s wishes.
Israeli film students have access to the top actors in the country, who regularly appear in their films. This year’s crop of Israeli films features such stars as Keren Mor, Noa Koler, Assi Cohen, Rona-Lee Shimon, Michael Moshonov, Rivka Michaeli, Itzik Cohen, Agam Rodberg, Suzanna Papian, Menashe Noy, Yuval Segal, Hadas Yaron, Aliza Rosen, Maor Levy, Vladimir Friedman, Shai Avivi, Ariel Bronz, and Loai Nofi.
Many of the Israeli students participating in the festival have been directly touched by the war. An award for a promising director has been named in memory of Yahav Winner, a filmmaker killed in Kfar Aza on October 7. The award was donated by actress and television presenter Galit Gutman.
There will also be a karaoke screening of the classic musical Grease to honor Maya Puder, an aspiring actress who was murdered at the Nova music festival. The event will be hosted by critic Zohar Orbach and actress Maya Dagan, and the audience will be encouraged to sing and dance along with the movie, which was one of Puder’s favorites.
Among the films in the international competition are works dealing with migration, identity, and the reality of war, including the film Walud, directed by Daood Alabdulaa and Louise Zenker, a drama set in Syria in 2014. It follows a young woman whose husband, an ISIS fighter, takes a second wife, a European volunteer who has joined the organization.
Guests this year will include French film editor Jean-Christophe Bouzy, who edited the Cannes Palme d’Or-winning film Titane; Ondrej Lipansky, the art director on Jojo Rabbit; Mela Melek, the production designer on A Real Pain; and Wolfgang Thaler, the cinematographer on Sparta and Transatlantic.
Festival events will also include a preview screening of Michel Franco’s new film Dreams, starring Jessica Chastain.
For the full program, visit taufilmfest.com/?lang=en.