The Jerusalem Film Festival will be held this summer at the Jerusalem Cinematheque (and other venues) from August 24-September 4, and once again the festival will host Industry Days (August 24-29), a variety of events for film professionals that bring together Israeli filmmakers and the international film industry. A number of Israel’s highest-profile filmmakers will participate in Industry Days.
The centerpiece of these events will be the Pitch Point competition, which includes a track for films in advanced stages of development and another for projects that have already been filmed (works in progress) and need funding for post-production.
As part of the various Pitch Point competitions, prizes will be awarded by the Jerusalem Foundation, Jungle Sound/Edit Studios, the CineLab Laboratory in Romania and others with a total value of approximately NIS 450,000.
The Israeli directors who will participate in the Pitch Point framework for full-length films in development include Sophie Artus, who previously made the film Valley, and Hadas Ben Aroya, best known for People Who Are Not Me.
Pitch Point’s post-production projects include movies by such well-known filmmakers as Erez Tadmor (A Matter of Size, The Art of Waiting) and Moshe Rosenthal (Confess, Our Way Back).
In addition, as part of the Short Pitch Point competition in collaboration with the Gesher Foundation for Multicultural Cinema, a grant of NIS 250,000 will be awarded for the best short script. This competition will feature projects by directors including Dover Koshashvili (Late Marriage), Yona Rozenkier (The Dive), Tom Shoval (Youth) and Tsivia Barkai Yaacov (Red Cow).
Another component of the Industry Days will be the graduation event of the Sam Spiegel International Film Lab, an incubator for the development of groundbreaking feature films by promising filmmakers from Israel and around the world. The festival will also host a film development incubator run by the Jerusalem Film & Television Fund, which will be given to filmmakers who live and work in Jerusalem.
Ifat Tubi is the director of the Industry Days events. More details will be available soon on the Jerusalem Cinematheque website at jff.org.il/en.