Not many people know how to dream. Of those who do, even fewer know how to turn their dreams into actions. But Ronny Fellus, the founder and one of two artistic directors of Film Festival Cinema Italia in Israel, and the founder and director of Festival “Finita La Commedia” (sic) knows very well. His passion for cinema and for connecting Italians and Israelis through films brought him back to Israel.
In 2019 he left behind the sun of Tuscany (and his own olive tree orchards where he still produces high-quality olive oil today) and the picturesque streets of one of the most beautiful cities in the world, Rome, where Ronny Fellus lived for most of his life, to settle for good in Tel Aviv, the city where he was born.
Fellus was born to an Italian Israeli family. His father, an Italian from Tripoli, met his mother while living for 18 years in Tel Aviv. Ronny Fellus likes to tell his family story of three generations born in the Land of Israel, but officially in different countries: His grandmother was born in Jerusalem during the Ottoman Empire (Ronny’s great grandmother moved to Jerusalem from Yemen at the end of the 19th century). His mother was born in Tel Aviv under the British Mandate, and Ronny Fellus, or in fact Ronen, was the first in his family born in the State of Israel, in Tel Aviv, in 1958. Two years later, his parents decided to move to Italy.
As with many Jews from the Diaspora, Ronny Fellus holds not only two passports (Israeli since he officially came back as a toshav hozer, returning citizen, two years ago), but also a double identity. He is “the Italiano” in Israel, and the Israeli in Italy.
He grew up in Rome, but as a young man he was longing for Israel, and came here to study sociology and economy in Jerusalem. After his studies, however, he moved back to Italy, where he started a very successful career as a diamond dealer.
For many years Fellus was running his Italian business and caring for his family (he is a father of two adult daughters), while operating his olive oil production operation in Tuscany on the side. It was a perfect life, but he felt something was missing.
“I wanted to do something more creative”, he says. As he has always felt a connection to Israel and Jewish culture, he began to become more active in the Jewish community of Rome. Fellus organized holiday gatherings and “Jewish Book Days” for the local Jewish community. In 2006 he organized the first Israeli Film Festival in Rome, which became the turning point in his life. It was a great success and reached way beyond the Jewish community.
“The Italian audience discovered Israeli movies,” says Fellus.
The film festival became a yearly event, and Fellus invited Dan Angelo Muggia – an Israeli of Italian origins, film teacher, critic and actor – to cooperate with him on the project. At that point they were not yet planning any festivals in Israel.
While he was still living in Italy, Fellus, in order to select movies for the Festival together with Muggia, began visiting Israel more frequently.
“I started to come to the Haifa and Jerusalem film festivals, and the Docaviv documentary film festival in Tel Aviv on a regular basis,” he says.
In 2013, during Doc Aviv, he had a revelation: Just as there is the Israeli Film Festival in Rome, he thought, there should be a mirror festival of Italian movies in Israel.
“Israelis love everything Italian: food, music, opera and cinema. But for the Israelis, the Italian cinema only consisted of the old comedies. They were missing the contemporary Italian movies here,” he says. “Of course, some movies are screened in Israeli cinemas, brought by local distributors, but there was no opportunity to see the 10 best Italian movies of the year in Israel. There was a French film festival, an Irish film festival, but no Italian one. I felt there was a gap.”
FELLUS DIDN’T hesitate. He soon reached out to the Italian Embassy and was so convincing that in 2014, Cinema Italia had its first edition in Israel.
“Together with Dan Angelo Muggia, in cooperation with the Italian Cultural Institutes of Tel Aviv and Haifa and Monica Moscato (Cinecittà Luce – Filmitalia) and the Cinematheques, we created the festival and it fast became a stable position of the cultural calendar in Israel.”
In 2016, Fellus founded the second festival in Israel (in autumn each year) dedicated specifically to Italian comedies “?Finita la Commedia” That also became a stable fixture on the local cultural calendar.
In 2020, due to COVID-19, both festivals only ran an online version. This year, on the 3rd of June, the eighth edition of Italian Film Festival in Israel, “Cinema Italia,” came back to the Tel Aviv Cinematheque. Sixteen movies, contemporary and classic, are being screened in Cinematheques all over Israel throughout the entire month.
The classic section pays homage this year to maestro Ettore Scola with six extraordinary productions, and to the 50th anniversary of the release of Death in Venice by Luchino Visconti, which the festival will present in a restored version. The festival will also feature the documentary The truth about La Dolce Vita by Giuseppe Pedersoli, about the genesis of one of the masterpieces in the history of cinema.
Coronavirus restrictions still make it impossible to invite guests to gather socially this year, but in previous years (and hopefully in the future) there was a Q&A with Italian directors, actors and movie producers that were important parts of the festival. Fellus also wants to bring Israelis and Italians closer to each other by inviting guests.
“The Italian directors and actors who come here for Q&A following their movie screenings find Israel as a huge surprise. They are astonished how vivid and young Israel is, and especially Tel Aviv. They enjoy eating local food, renting bikes, riding along Rothschild Boulevard and buying spices at Lewinsky Market,” he says.
Through these meetings, Israel becomes more accessible to Italians. And in this way, the festival functions as a form of public diplomacy.
In the process, Italians become closer to Israelis, too. Films at the festival are shown with both Hebrew and English subtitles.
“We want to make it accessible to a wide audience,” says Ronny. “One year, we had a funny story, a film about Fellini was surprisingly shown in Spanish. There was some consternation in the cinema. After a few minutes, we re-started the screening, in Italian, of course.”
Anyone who meets Ronny Fellus at least once thinks of him as an expert on movies. However, he responds, “I am not an expert, I am the biggest lover of the cinema.”
His hobby became a real passion and changed not only his career but his life as well. People never know what might bring them back to Israel. But for Fellus, the idea of creating an Italian film festival in Israel and his great passion for cinema brought him back to Tel Aviv. Two years ago, Fellus officially moved back to Israel and received his Teudat Zehut ID card.
But he is still the Italian in Israel. He changed location but didn’t give up his Italian lifestyle. On the contrary. He eats like an Italian and never drinks cappuccino (or Israeli “hafuch”) in the afternoon, he brings his olive oil from Tuscany, attends a conservative synagogue where the rabbi is his Italian childhood friend Rabbi Roberto Arbib. Fellus has many relatives in Israel, and they occasionally meet at an Italian restaurant in Tel Aviv that is owned by one of his cousins. Ronny himself enjoys cooking and inviting friends for dinner, with Italian wine, of course. They often sit for hours around the table. Just like in an Italian movie.
One thing is certain... an Italian in Israel or an Israeli in Italy – at the cinema: the same person.