The 38th Jerusalem Film Festival, which will take place from August 24-September 4 at the Jerusalem Cinematheque and other locations, just announced the details of its Israeli programs.
The Israeli movie that has been digitally restored by the Israel Film Archive for this year’s film festival is Uri Zohar’s Big Eyes, a 1974 film. Zohar stars in it as Beni Furman, a womanizing basketball coach and Arik Einstein as his friend, a basketball player.
Among the new feature films that will take part in the Haggiag Competition for Best Israeli Feature Film is Tom Shoval’s latest film, Push the Worry from Your Heart, about the widow (Bérénice Bejo, the French/Argentinian actress who starred in The Artist) of a wealthy Israeli who invites a homeless family to live with her. Shoval’s film, Youth, won the top prize at the Jerusalem Film Festival in 2013.
Pini Tavger is an actor making his feature-film directorial debut with More Than I Deserve, about a stressed Ukrainian single mother whose young son is drawn to the warmth of a haredi family in their building. He made a version of this as a short film in 2008 which was one of the best short films I have ever seen, so this is one to look forward to.
Just in time for the Olympics, Adam Kalderon’s The Swimmer looks at an athlete training to compete in the Games who falls for a teammate. It stars Omer Perelman Striks of Shababnikim.
Hadas Ben Aroya (People That Are Not Me) has a new film, Someone Will Love Someone, which combines three linked stories that paint a portrait of Israel’s secular youth.
Yair Asher and Itamar Lapid’s How Could You Let This Happen? stars Yakir Portal, Roy Miller, Yuval Oron and Moran Rosenblatt, in the story of an Israeli pianist living in Paris who returns home and is drawn into his brother’s drug-fueled lifestyle.
Cinema Sabaya, by Orit Fouks Rotem, is about a group of Arab and Jewish municipality employees who meet in a coexistence center to participate in a video workshop. The film focuses on the group dynamics and the videos they shoot which spotlight their diverse backgrounds. The cast features three-time Ophir Award winner Dana Ivgy, singer/actress Amal Murkus and Marlene Bajali.
Among the movies in the Diamond Competition for Israeli Documentary Films will be Yair Qedar’s The Last Episode of A. B. Yehoshua, about the acclaimed writer; Shlomi Elkabetz’s Black Notebooks, which was just shown at Cannes, which features video diaries that provided the raw materials for the trilogy of films about his family that he wrote and directed with his late sister, Ronit Elkabetz; and Vanessa Lapa’s Speer Goes to Hollywood, a look at how Nazi architect Albert Speer tried to turn his memoirs into a Hollywood movie.
Dr. Noa Regev, the festival director and CEO of the cinematheque, and Elad Samorzik, artistic director, said in a statement: "We are pleased to unveil a rich and fascinating Israeli program that reflects courageous and uncompromising activity. The complex Israeli reality permeates contemporary cinema in a variety of forms and expressions: exacerbating class gaps, the younger generation exploring boundaries and seeking redemption, ongoing issues of national, ethnic and gender identity, films about cultural heroes, works that reveal disturbing stories from the past and filmmakers who follow characters from the various groups and communities that make up Israeli society. The films selected for the festival from among the hundreds of submissions reflect the new cinematic achievements of Israeli cinema, which excels in its originality, innovation and daring.”