Shmuel Beru’s Hager (Land) won the Best Israeli Film Award at the recently concluded 42nd Haifa International Film Festival.
Beru’s film tells the story of Ethiopian Jews facing a dangerous journey to Israel against a backdrop of political upheaval and violence.
The film also received the artistic achievement award for cinematography, honoring the work of Itzik Portal, Uri Ackerman, Ran Aviad, and Yoram Milo.
Hager (Land) is one of a growing number of movies by Israelis of Ethiopian descent bringing their experiences to the screen.
Double Panther and Blue Marks shared the Jury Prize for Israeli Narrative Features.
Double Panther, directed by Marco Carmel, dramatizes the story of the radical Mizrahi-rights group, the Black Panthers, in the 1970s.
Yaakov Zada-Daniel won Best Actor for his portrayal of Yaakov Elbaz, a criminal turned police informer whose moral compass draws him into that struggle.
'Blue Marks' wins three awards
Dina Zvi Riklis’s Blue Marks received three awards: the Jury Prize, Best Screenplay, and Best Actress for Noa Ohayon.
Based on a novel by Emilie Moatti, it follows a young woman trying to escape her past and reinvent herself.
Tomer Heymann’s I Want to Tell My Story received the Documentary Jury Prize. The film centers on Shimon Rothschild, a Holocaust survivor who, with a movie crew, recreates his memories on the eve of his 100th birthday.
Tali Shamir-Wurtzberger and Nadan Pines also received the Documentary Research Award for their work on the film.
Reut Akkerman’s Stay! won the Amit Peled Award for Best Debut Film. Akkerman wrote, directed, and starred in the film, drawing on her own experiences to tell the story of a woman unexpectedly confronting her roots.
The late director Nitzan Gilady, who died in July, received two honors. His final feature, Thou Shalt Love, earned the Pnina Blayer Special Mention, an award named for the festival’s late longtime director, for a film addressing social issues.
The movie looks at a haredi couple where the husband is struggling with his attraction to men.
Oct. 7 short film wins Best Independent Short
Gilady’s short film Nechama, about a mother’s grief following October 7, won Best Independent Short.
In the international competitions, Lance Hammer’s Queen at Sea won the Carmel Award for Best Film. The British-American drama examines a family’s struggle over the care and autonomy of a woman with Alzheimer’s disease.
Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s All of a Sudden received the Carmel Competition’s Special Mention.
The Golden Anchor Award went to Chinese director Zou Jing’s debut feature, A Girl Unknown, which follows a girl searching for belonging as she moves between families and identities.
Sandra Wollner’s Austrian-German film Everytime, an exploration of grief, received the Golden Anchor Competition’s Special Mention.