Mourning is a subject frequently featured in Israeli cinema partly due to the number of Jews in the country and the way in which even those who are secular are familiar with the basics of what happens ritually after a person’s death. The period of mourning allows for transition from an unthinkable loss to a new reality, providing a system of healing that isn’t offered in the same way in other religions. Recent films like Longing, Foxtrot, and One Week and a Day have dealt with complicated instances in which the process of sitting shiva is affected by specific circumstances. The latest Israeli film to be released in the United States adds considerably to the grief with its own portrayal of an unusual loss.

Thomas (Tim Kalkhof) is a baker living in Berlin who begins an affair with a visiting Israeli businessman named Oren (Roy Miller). Whenever he comes to town, Oren stops by Thomas’ shop for a delectable treat, making sure to pick one up each time to bring home to his wife, Anat (Sarah Adler), and his son Itai (Tamir Ben Yehuda). When Thomas learns that Oren has been killed in a car accident back home, he travels to Jerusalem and visits Anat’s café, keeping his relationship with Oren a secret. After Anat hires him as a dishwasher, Thomas begins to make some of the delicacies he used to create on a daily basis in Germany, building a relationship with Anat in the process that can somehow help him feel closer to the love that they’ve both lost.

As usual, English is the universal language in this German-Israeli coproduction, with only the late Oren speaking both German and Hebrew fluently. Thomas is a man of few words to begin with, and he’s someone who listens carefully, taking his time to heed the instructions of those around him and say nothing he doesn’t need to. In the course of his acclimation to Israel, however, he does experience an unexpected obstacle as a result of his accidental violation of kashrut laws. When he first bakes cookies as a birthday surprise for Itai, he is admonished since his unsupervised utilization of the oven jeopardizes the kosher status of the café.

Anat repeatedly states throughout the film that she is not religious and doesn’t want to be religious, fighting back against her friend Moti (Zohar Shtrauss) for questioning her hiring of a German employee and her willingness to let him keep cooking. When she invites Thomas to come to her home for Shabbat dinner and he quickly offers not to bring anything homemade, she responds that her home isn’t kosher. Subtle commentaries about the kashrut industry in Israel rightfully take a backseat to this sweet story of searching for solace in unexpected ways.

The food in this film takes a supporting role, but it still occasionally reaches the level of a film like Chef. Watching Thomas make pastries is a delight, and it’s clear that all who taste them are experiencing the same sensation that visual montages of pies and cakes create for viewers of the film. Either the food portrayed on screen really was that good, or this film’s stars are incredible actors for making each bite seem truly and incomparably delicious.

Sarah Adler may be familiar to American cinephiles for her starring role in Aya, the Oscar-nominated short film about an unplanned car ride from Ben-Gurion Airport, or her performance in the well-regarded Israeli film Jellyfish. She and German actor Tim Kalkhof make a great pair, demonstrating a chemistry that isn’t quite romantic but rather based on a shared sensitivity and positive expression towards the world.

Though this film is rooted in loss, it’s a sentimental, lovely story that feels particularly wonderful at this moment in time. At its purest, it’s a film about two people brought together by a love cut short which just happens to be the same for both of them. The lack of a proscribed end point or typical romantic arc makes it a particularly wondrous experience, equally melancholy and hopeful, and plentifully appetizing at all times.

The Cakemaker opens in New York and Los Angeles this Friday, June 29th, with more cities to follow in July.

Still from The Cakemaker

The post Jewcy Review: ‘The Cakemaker’ appeared first on Jewcy.

It’s awards season! Nominations for the Critics’ Choice Awards, Golden Globes, and Screen Actors Guild have all been announced in recent weeks, all leading up to the Oscar nominees being revealed in mid-January before the trophies are handed out to the winners at the beginning of March.

One of the most interesting categories of the Oscar is Best Foreign Language Film, which honors the best imports from all around the world. Ninety-two countries submitted films, and a list of nine finalists was announced last week. Five films will ultimately make the cut when nominations are revealed on January 23rd.

Israel is the most-nominated country that has yet to win a trophy. The first of its ten nominations came in 1964 for Ephraim Kishon’s Sallah Shabati, featuring future Oscar nominee and Fiddler on the Roof star Chaim Topol. Its most recent bid was for the fabulous Joseph Cedar’s Footnote in 2011.

Israel’s submission each year is determined by the winner of the Best Picture prize from the Israeli Academy of Film and Television, which hands out the Ophir Awards every September. One notable exception was when 2007 winner The Band’s Visit, now a successful musical on Broadway, was disqualified due to its extensive use of English dialogue, and Beaufort was submitted instead and received an Oscar nomination. In Between, which premiered last month at the Other Israel Film Festival, was a top Ophir nominee this year, losing to Foxtrot.

Foxtrot is the second feature film from director Samuel Maoz. It begins with two parents, Michael (Lior Ashkenazi) and Daphna (Sarah Adler), receiving the devastating news that their son has been killed in action. As Michael in particular struggles to cope with the news and with the way in which the Israeli military deals with the death of one of their own, new information comes to light that complicates everything. The experience at a checkpoint by their late son, Jonathan (Yonatan Shiray), and his fellow soldiers also comes into focus as they struggle to deal with an unthinkable mistake.

This film winning the top prize of the Israeli academy created controversy because Israeli Minister of Culture Miri Regev, who hadn’t even seen the film, spoke out against its negative portrayal of the Israeli army. Without spoiling too much of the film’s plot, it’s simplest to say that innocent people are killed and the accident is covered up. In an age where so much involving Israel is controversial, this strikes a particular nerve. Some see Foxtrot as a potential tool to be used as anti-Israel propaganda for portraying crimes the state commits onscreen, while others appreciate its handling of a complex situation that it merely presents without trying to justify or condemn it.

Maoz has given meaningful explanations for what inspired him to make this film and why he included that scene. When his daughter would repeatedly run late to school and take a taxi there, one day he made her take the public bus  to teach her about punctuality. That morning, there were reports of a terrorist attack on that bus route, and he couldn’t reach her by phone for an hour— he thought she was dead. When she returned— safe— later that day, he felt enormous relief, but it left him with a new fascination about that which we can’t control.

Addressing the controversy, he notes that film should create discussion, and it has now become a symbol of the freedom of speech and expression. At a screening in Jerusalem in October, Maoz said, “If I criticize the place I live, I do it because I worry. I want to protect it; I do it for love.”

Foxtrot isn’t the first Israeli film to win acclaim while portraying a complicated view of Israel and the way its military and its citizenry operate. Waltz with Bashir, which explored its director’s memories of the 1982 Lebanon war and included many moral dilemmas, probably came closest to winning the Oscar in 2008 when it split votes with France’s The Class, resulting in a win for Japan’s Departures. Maoz’s first film, Lebanon, released in 2009 and also set in 1982 in Lebanon, explored the effect of war on soldiers and the permanent imprint it leaves.

Unlike Lebanon, which takes place entirely inside a tank, this film is sparse on dialogue, instead spending most of its time focused on the silent reactions of its characters to events around them. Michael’s difficulty accepting what he has learned from the soldiers at his door is felt thanks to the power of superstar Lior Ashkenazi’s muted performance, and moments at the checkpoint have a similar poignancy. There are also moments of creativity in the film involving illustrations to visualize emotion and some dancing that gives the film its title.

The last two Ophir winners, Sand Storm and Baba Joon, centered on diverse communities within Israel. Two other recent choices, Gett: The Trial of Vivianne Amsalem and Fill the Void, both excellent films, dealt with very religious populations and how they handle their affairs in an insular way. The other winner from the past five years, Bethlehem, told a similar story about a Palestinian informant and his Israeli handler as Omar, officially submitted by Palestine as their entry and an eventual Oscar nominee.

Foxtrot zooms out from looking at one representative of a particular Israeli community to the general picture of a country that requires military service for all its citizens. It’s the first Israeli film since Footnote to end up on the list of nine finalists released last week, putting it much closer to becoming the eleventh Oscar-nominated film from Israel.

Films that have tackled the complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, often from a very critical perspective, have had success, with both The Gatekeepers and Five Broken Cameras earning bids for Best Documentary in 2012. While this film doesn’t dig quite as much into the conflict and instead offers a thought-provoking look at how it affects those involved, it’s still likely to garner votes from those who appreciate Maoz’s willingness to think critically about his country. It’s hardly a lock considering its competition, which includes Sweden’s The Square, Germany’s In the Fade, and Chile’s A Fantastic Woman, but Foxtrot may just make the cut.

Foxtrot is slated for release in the United States on March 2nd, 2018.

Still courtesy Sony Pictures

The post ‘Foxtrot’ and Israel’s Oscar History appeared first on Jewcy.

This marks the eleventh year of the Other Israel Film Festival, presented by the JCC Manhattan, which features films that showcase minority populations in Israel. Most of the selections are documentaries, including Desert Wounds, which follows Sudanese refugees in Israel, and The Field, which explores the Palestinian Center for Nonviolence, which hosts regular conversations between Palestinians and Israeli settlers. These films tackle hard questions about the complexities of life in Israel, and often their conclusions don’t present the country in anything resembling a positive light. Two narrative films, however, serving as the opening and closing night films of this year’s festival, have both made quite a splash for their portrayals of a segment of Israeli society that can function alongside the more mainstream Jewish population.

The opening night selection, In Between, premiered at the JCC on November 2nd. Hungarian-born Palestinian director Maysaloun Hamoud brings to the screen a story that sounds like the beginning of a joke. Three Palestinian young women share an apartment in Tel Aviv – Laila (Mouna Hawa), a stylish lawyer, Salma (Sana Jammelieh), a lesbian DJ, and Nour (Shaden Kanboura), a religious Muslim computer science student. Nour, who moves in to take her cousin’s room, stands out the most from Laila and Salma, good friends whose work ethic and ability to hold down a job separate them. Despite the setup, this premise is far from a laughing matter, and serves as the launching point to offer an entertaining, affecting look at three women representing different facets of Palestinian society in Israel.

There are a few moments in which we are reminded that these characters live in someone else’s country, like when Laila tells a flirtatious coworker that his mom will only approve a “kosher Jewish bride” and when Salma flips out on the manager of a restaurant where she works for telling her that the customers don’t want to hear the cooks yelling in Arabic while they’re eating their meal. But, more than a film about inequality of religion or origin, this is a strong showcase of women and the experience of living in a culture-based and gendered society. Though Laila has a great job and is perceived well by all her colleagues, her boyfriend Ziad (Mahmud Shalaby) is far from eager to introduce her to his family and take their relationship seriously. Salma begins a relationship with Dunya (Ashlam Canaan) while still traveling home to be set up by her conservative parents with eligible bachelors. Nour is engaged to Wissam (Henry Andrawes), who thanks her for the dinner she cooks him but reminds her that the Quran says that a woman’s place is in the home and urges her to leave the corrupting influence of her two secular roommates.

If the film doesn’t drill into the ways in which Palestinians lead unequal lives to Jewish Israelis, the Q&A session that followed the screening certainly did. After a gushing introduction about Hamoud’s talents from festival founder Carole Zabar, whose family owns the popular Upper West Side store, Hamoud was invited up to participate in a conversation following the film with Israeli MK Merav Michaeli. While commending the film, Michaeli prompted an aggressive response from Hamoud in the way that she asked questions, seeking to hold this film’s success up as an example of positive Palestinian progress in Israel. Hamoud isn’t content with the way things stand, and she cites the Nakba, the Second Antifada, and the Arab Spring as prime influencers of this new generation of the Arab underground in Israel, which, she notes, listens to the same music and watches the same movies as populations in countries considered enemies of Israel.

At one point, Hamoud chastised Michaeli for “right wing talking,” arguing that comparing the Palestinian experience to worse situations in other countries doesn’t mean that they deserve it. Michaeli fired back, “So it’s a lose-lose situation for leftist Israelis,” prompting much laughter from the audience in attendance.

This film embodies so much of what the Other Israel Film Festival is about. Produced by Shlomi Elkabetz, brother and frequent filmmaking partner of the late Ronit Elkabetz, this film was nominated for twelve Ophir Israeli Academy Award nominations and wins for both Kanboura and Hawa. It is also the subject of controversy, with a fatwa issued on the director by the mayor of an Arab town. The conversation that happened after the film – which the organizers of the festival hope will continue throughout the weeklong festival – is almost as valuable as the film itself.

After nonfiction films about a Palestinian zoo and the two-state solution play, Holy Air will wrap up this festival next Thursday. This film, which played at the Tribeca Film Festival this past April, focuses on an entirely different segment of the population in Israel. Its protagonist, Adam (Shady Srour), is a Christian entrepreneur in Israel who is trying to come up with a perfect product so that he can support his ailing father and the child his wife is about to have. His great idea is ingenious – bottling “holy air” captured from Mount Precipice and selling it to visiting believers. In his efforts to market this product, Adam must interact with Jewish funders, Muslim gangsters, and Christian authorities to ensure his success. While it lacks the same dramatic poignancy of In Between, this film serves as a fun and thought-provoking look at a businessman trying to make it big in a particularly unusual market.

Tickets are still on sale for many of the features and shorts playing at the Other Israel Film Festival, which once again proves that there are so many stories to be told from those living in or interacting with Israel, and what better way than film to do it?

Visit www.otherisrael.org for information and to purchase tickets! Holy Air also runs in New York at the Village East Cinema starting November 17th.

Photo by Seth Golob. Maysaloun Hamoud is on the left, Merav Michaeli is on the right with the black dress.

The post Other Israel Film Festival Spotlight appeared first on Jewcy.

One of the most popular movies in Israel is coming to theaters in the United States, bringing with it a decidedly Israeli story about a Jerusalem congregation’s struggle to rebuild when it must start from a new foundation.

The premise is simple enough – during a Shabbat morning service, the women’s balcony in a Jerusalem synagogue collapses. The only one injured is the rabbi’s wife, though her hospitalization triggers a worsening in the condition of the aging rabbi, who retreats to his home, almost entirely cutting off communication with the outside world. Zion (Igal Naor), a close friend of the rabbi and the grandfather of the Bar Mitzvah boy whose journey into Jewish adulthood was interrupted by the collapse, is one of the ringleaders in trying to repair the synagogue. This operation that comes to be supervised by Rabbi David (Aviv Alush), whose views on religious customs differ considerably from those of the community, triggers a schism within the congregation about the very literal place of women in their synagogue, something they advocate for strongly.

Rabbi David’s entry into the equation comes as a result of an act of kindness, as members of the newly buildingless congregation stand outside their temporary space trying to get a minyan. After a number of men pass them by, he eagerly accepts their invitation to pray but first goes to recruit a number of people from his yeshiva upon learning that he will only be counted as the fifth man. He is struck by the sight of the destroyed synagogue, including the Torah scroll that was crushed when the balcony fell. He asks Zion and members of the community if they will allow him to provide rabbinical supervision for the reconstruction of the synagogue, and problems then begin to emerge when the newly-remodeled sanctuary is very noticeably missing one thing: a women’s balcony, which has now been replaced by what one angry wife describes as an outhouse.

This is a distinct story that could only serve as the plot of a film in Israel. There exists so much diversity between the denominations of Judaism within the United States that this almost seems like a hyper-specific difference of opinion that would ultimately prove inconsequential. In Israel, Judaism and observance are so intertwined with everyday secular life that it makes sense that this situation could present itself. The most comparable entry here in America is probably Is That a Gun In Your Pocket?, which was released this past September and chronicles the happenings in a Texas town where women banded together to withhold sex from their husbands until they got rid of their guns. That may be politics instead of religion, but in both cases, the wives champion a cause and struggle to get their husbands to join them in that same battle.

There are many levels of nuance here, particularly when it comes to a woman’s role in the synagogue. Just as Orthodox women who wish to have their own experience with a Torah at the kotel are an underrepresented segment of a debate that far more often features the more liberal Women of the Wall, this has nothing to do with women taking on an increased role in religious life. Instead, it is about a maintenance of the same traditions that have helped the community to thrive over the years, and the hostile way in which someone who believes that he knows better comes in to try to change things under the guise of religious purity.

This film does a tremendous job of showing the process by which people are compelled to become “more religious” (or, more colloquially, “flipping out”). When he is initially introduced, Rabbi David is defined by an act of kindness and selflessness. One particularly inspirational and passionately-delivered sermon praises women as far greater than men, exempted from studying scripture, and he suggests that the men present should buy their wives a present. This token of love, it turns out, is something far more deceptive, since the gift each man gives his wife is a scarf meant to cover her hair, denoting that they must become more pure by adopting a custom that has never been part of their way of life.

This film contains a good deal of commentary on what it means to be religiously respectful to those who practice Judaism differently. When one woman, Tikvah (Orna Banai), who has begun dressing very modestly and covering her hair, rudely declines an invitation to the home of Zion’s wife, Ettie (Evelin Hagoel), she reminds Tikvah of the time they were traveling in Greece and a flirtatious waiter brought her pork chops on the house, which she pretended to eat and instead fed to a cat. Ettie also puts up a fight when Rabbi David, eating as a guest in her home on Passover, insults her late father’s religious knowledge by deeming the use of a Shabbos goy to fix a circuit breaker forbidden.

Mixed in with all this exploration of what it means to be Jewish, religious, and respectful is a highly entertaining film about a community defined most by social interactions framed in a religious context. Banai and Alsh both picked up Ophir nominations from the Israeli Film Academy, as did the film’s music, costumes, and makeup, but the entire cast, particularly Naor and Hagoel, is terrific. There is drama coursing through this film’s veins since the threat to stability that this new reality presents is real, but there’s also a lightness present throughout that makes the film supremely enjoyable. Its heartwarming nature may not present any real-life solutions, but it’s a great movie nonetheless.

The Women’s Balcony officially opens Friday, May 26.

Still courtesy of Menemsha Films.

The post Jewcy Review: ‘The Women’s Balcony’ appeared first on Jewcy.

Israeli-American Ultra-Orthodox filmmaker Rama Burshtein’s debut, Fill the Void, won the Israeli Oscar for Best Picture four years ago. Now, Burshtein is back with a very different film, The Wedding Plan, which is, yes, also about a wedding. Jewcy caught up with Burshtein at the Tribeca Film Festival to discuss her unconventional new comedy that follows a young woman named Michal who is so desperate to get married that she plans a wedding, invites her guests, and only then starts working on the most crucial element: finding a groom.

Jewcy: What is it about weddings that appeals to you so much?

It’s not about weddings, it’s about love. In my world love comes with marriage.

Jewcy: This is quite the premise – a woman wants to get married and doesn’t care that there’s no groom. Where did you come up what that idea?

I have no idea. I think that we lack hope, that we’re too committed to despair. I really wanted to do something about that. There’s nothing like romantic comedy to make it digestible. You can receive it better in a setting like this. We all feel very strongly. Wherever we are, the highs and lows are so close that you can be at both places at the same moment, and I wanted to show that in film.

Jewcy: It’s nice to see a wedding presented in a more comedic format. Fill the Void wasn’t particularly funny.

Not at all. It was like a Swedish film. When we shot it, I couldn’t believe that I was doing this kind of film. This comedy is more me.

Jewcy: Was Michal inspired by anyone in particular? She’s such an incredible protagonist who doesn’t really experience the world around her in the way that everyone else does, and that’s what makes her so great.

There are a lot of people. My casting director’s name is Michal. She looks like her, and she’s still not married. She’s secular and she still didn’t find someone. On the wedding invitation Michal sends out in the film, her last name is my maiden name. My sister Hadar is not married. There’s a lot of people in terms of inspiration. So many people in this world who don’t find their partner, and they’re 30, 35, or 40. It’s something that we really see a lot today. They’re my inspiration and I hope that they can get something out of it to help them move in different directions.

Jewcy: Do you think that this is a film that plays differently to religious and secular audiences, Jewish or non-Jewish?

Definitely different. The surprising thing is that it works for all them, in very different ways. For the religious, it’s much harder to grasp than the secular. They have a dialogue with HaShem, they need to work in a different way to understand this. Secular people just want to make me a guru in Israel. The surprising thing is that the non-Jews connect to the belief in the film.

Jewcy: Most movies about observant characters that make it to a mainstream audience are about fighting with that observance. Both of these movies have nothing to do with that. It’s about fighting with cultural expectations and not whether or not to be observant. Was that important to you?

It’s always a dialogue with the inside, either someone trying to get in or someone trying to get out. That’s the reason I went out to make films. This is the voice I have. It’s okay that people interpret, but it’s not okay that it’s the only interaction people have with observance on film.

Jewcy: How did you find Noa Kooler, who plays Michal?

For Fill the Void, you need a young girl. You could actually find her on the street. Hadas Yaron was in the army when I cast her; she wasn’t in acting school. This character is much more complicated, and is at the age where you can’t really find an unknown. That was a bit of a turnoff because I wanted to find someone very fresh, and at this age usually it’s the peak of a career, if not towards the end.

I saw all the actresses in Israel, and Noa was the one who I found who could make you laugh and cry in the same scene without a cut. It was bashert as soon as she walked in. I saw it in the audition. No one gave her a leading role until this. No one gambled on her, and now, today, she’s not here in New York because she has a leading role in a very primetime show that’s shooting now. Everyone is giving her leading roles now. She went through a wall herself at the age of 36 and she’s starting her career. It’s amazing.

Jewcy: I won’t spoil the ending for our readers, but I loved it. Was there ever a time that it was going to turn out differently?

No. In order for it to be built how it’s built, you have to know how it’s going to end. Otherwise it won’t work. Secular people told me that, in watching it, they didn’t think that it would follow through and that they would be able to believe any kind of ending, and then suddenly they found themselves on the other side of the wall. They don’t know at what moment they started to buy it. That’s what I feel is the divine thing in this film, you suddenly find yourself on the other side of the wall. It’s not mine, I can’t repeat it, it’s just me being a visitor in God’s world.

Jewcy:  You used the song Im Eshkachech over and over in Fill the Void. Here, you used more secular Israeli music.

First of all, you have a rock star as one of Michal’s potential husbands. The words are the movement of this film, between coming and going. The package is a romantic comedy, and that can’t exist without a song that goes very fast into your heart and you start singing it and want to hear it again. The guy that made the music, Roy Edri, made the music and the score. He’s very talented, not in terms of doing something original, but everything he does goes very fast to the heart. Seconds, and you’re already in it. This is a tough pill to swallow– you need such a package, otherwise it’s very depressing.

Jewcy: Are there other movies about either weddings or love that might have inspired this?

Yes, a lot. I thought Silver Linings Playbook was great. There was something about the integrity and the sincerity that I really enjoyed. In a way, what I’m doing now is really more of a salad. Bridget Jones’ Diary has two men, both of whom are nice-looking. In that film, you know who she’s going to end up with, but here you have no idea. It’s a suspense film, not just a romantic comedy. People are on the edge of the chair trying to see how it’s going to work itself out. I don’t think there’s any one direct influence. I love watching romantic comedies.

Jewcy: What has the response been to the film?

It’s not out in the world yet. It’s starting now. In Israel, it’s already finished, so that’s all we know. People loved it in Israel, you can tell from the admissions. I don’t know how it’s going to go over in the world, but in Israel, it has a kind of cult following. I would get e-mails from people who saw it six times. I think it will resonate for a longer time there. It’s out here and in London, and it’s starting in other places.

Jewcy: What has your experience been at Tribeca?

We had the premiere a few days ago. You can sit as a director in the screening and you get this strong feeling that they hate it. And then it ends, and they clap their hands, and they don’t let you leave. You were a total failure, and now you’re a total success with only two minutes in between. I told my husband that I think I’m getting a bit old for that rollercoaster.

Jewcy: What’s next?

TV. I feel that today TV is very different from what it used to be. It’s like a very long film. There are really great filmmakers making great shows, like Paolo Sorrentino doing The Young Pope. It’s an amazing show like a long film, ten hours with a character. The side stories get their own space, which is so interesting for me. Without the touring and the festivals, I think I’ll like it. It’s good for me.

The Wedding Plan had its New York Premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this week as a Viewpoints selection. It opens May 12th in New York and Los Angeles.

Photo by Lea Golda Holterman

The post Jewcy Interviews: ‘The Wedding Plan’ appeared first on Jewcy.

This year marks the tenth edition of the Other Israel Film Festival, mounted by the JCC in Manhattan. The festival’s expressed goal is to shine a light on the Arab and Palestinian citizens of Israel. In addition, other minority populations, such as Bedouins and Portuguese immigrants, have been featured in the past. This year, the festival includes over a dozen films, from Jewish family dramas to a documentary about Muslim soccer players.  Jewcy had the opportunity to sample the festival with two of its most prominent offerings.

Harmonia is a film with a clever premise that should immediately bring a smile to the face of anyone remotely familiar with biblical stories. Its protagonist is Sarah (Tali Sharon), a harpist in the Jerusalem Philharmonic Orchestra. She is married to Abraham (Alon Aboutboul), who is the conductor of the orchestra. The two lead a lavish life of success, but the one thing they cannot do is have children. Enter Hagar (Yana Yossef), a non-Jewish, Arabic, East Jerusalem  native who plays the horn and who develops a close friendship with Sarah that leads to her offering to be a surrogate. The plot loosely follows the biblical narrative from there, all structured around a modern-day setting with music at its center.

At first glance, this might not seem like a film that represents an “other” Israel. Yet the traditional story of Hagar also involves her son Ishmael, who is not the ancestor of the Jewish people but instead sired a different nation. In this film, Hagar is a quiet, mousy figure who stands in stark contrast to the more verbose and assertive Sarah. When Hagar goes home to see her father, he asks her if she has fallen in love with a woman, a question she neglects to deny. Though Abraham is a formidable conductor, Hagar’s affection is for his wife, and though she claims that she will have no attachment towards her child, it’s obvious that such a thing is impossible. Seen in a present-day context, the differences between Isaac and Ishmael play out cleverly through music and culture, making for an involving, enjoyable ride.

Personal Affairs, on the other hand, is a film that sets itself entirely within Palestinian society. The closing night selection of the festival follows a Palestinian family with its members at different stages of their lives. In Nazareth, Nabeela (Sanaa Shawahdeh) and Saleh (Mahmoud Shawahdeh) barely say a word to each other, sitting on opposite couches and rarely interacting in a pleasant way, if they even find themselves trapped in a conversation. Their children live in Ramallah, and said offspring are busy with various relationship issues, a pregnancy, and an aging grandparent, as a start. As the children notice the miserable place their parents have come to, they their own problems more closely.

What Personal Affairs shows us is a multi-generational Palestinian family that lives very comfortably, each member inhabiting a separate home that has more than enough space for them. The problems they experience are universal, and little aside from the Arabic language they speak distinguishes their location or culture. It’s only when new opportunities present themselves, like the chance for one of the younger generation to audition for an American movie filming in Haifa, that audiences are firmly reminded of where the film takes place.

Nabeela and Saleh’s son-in-law George (Amer Hlehel) is a mechanic, insistently invited by a movie producer to audition after he fixes her air conditioner. He sees no reason not to go to the audition, but his friends immediately warn him to carefully read the script to make sure that the character he is playing is not a terrorist so that he can positively represent the Palestinian people on screen. On his way to Haifa, he expresses a fascination at seeing the sea for the first time and wants nothing more than to stop for a moment to walk along the beach and step into the water. A later scene involving a checkpoint demonstrates the implications of airing personal problems in an inappropriate place with potentially serious consequences – a small fight about a relationship status playing out in front of armed soldiers – with great performances from actors Doraid Liddawi and Maisa Abd Elhadi as Nabeela and Saleh’s son Tarek and his girlfriend Maysa.

Neither film presents an unsettling story of inequality, and both manage to tell compelling tales of people interacting and living life throughout the land known as Israel. This festival seeks to provide a platform for films about “those often overlooked by mainstream Israeli society and culture.” These two selections certainly do that, and it’s refreshing to see positive representations of communities in Israel that aren’t defined by conflict or disagreement, and certainly not be anything more volatile. One friend remarks to his actor buddy that if he was playing a Jew, maybe it wouldn’t actually matter. Portraying the many facets of Israel in a good light, at least when it comes to entertainment, is an enticing opportunity offered by this festival, that, in its tenth edition, continues to be a worthwhile and unique endeavor.

Read more about the Other Israel Film Festival (running through December 8) and this year’s selections!

Images from Harmonia and Personal Affairs.

The post Other Israel Film Festival Spotlight appeared first on Jewcy.

This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Israel Film Festival in Los Angeles, which has presented over 1000 films over the past three decades showcasing the best in Israeli cinema. The festival began this year on November 9th and concludes on November 23rd, with films screening primarily at the Ahrya Fine Arts Theater in Beverly Hills and the Laemmle Town Center 5 in Encino. Jewcy had the chance to attend two back-to-back screenings this past weekend.

Both films contended at the Ophir Awards, Israel’s version of the Oscars, for Best Picture, losing to another film playing at the festival, Sand Storm, Elite Zexer’s trailblazing Bedouin story that opened in New York at the end of September. Beyond the Mountains and Hills comes from writer-director Eran Kolirin, best known for the international hit The Band’s Visit. One Week and a Day is the full-length feature debut of director Asaph Polonsky.

Beyond the Mountains and Hills introduces David (Alon Pdut), a likable man discharged from the army after twenty-seven years of service. Not sure what to do with his life, David begins attending seminars and starts selling dietary supplements, hosting informational sessions at his home and hitting his friends up to buy the products. This difficulty adjusting to normal civilian life after a long time spent away as a hotshot member of the military is immensely familiar and hardly unique to Israel. One particularly telling scene at the start of the film finds David in the middle of an interview when, upon discovering that his interviewer knows someone he worked with in the army, he finds it most prudent to call the man and have him say hello rather than focusing on pitching himself for the job. It’s a far more comic take than, say, the poignant scene in The Hurt Locker where Jeremy Renner’s returning soldier stares blankly at a daunting cereal aisle, but this film is also considerably lighter than the Oscar-winning war movie.

David’s family also plays a big part in the film, particularly his wife, Rina (Shiree Nadav-Naor), and his daughter, Yifat (Mili Eshet). Rina is a teacher who develops a relationship that borders on inappropriate with one of her students, not unhappy in her marriage but rather entranced by the affection of a much younger man. Yifat is an open-minded free spirit, not content to accept the preconceptions her Israeli society tells her about her Arab neighbors. When an Arab man who hit on her by the side of the road one night is found dead, she travels to his family’s home and meets another young man of whom her family definitely would not approve. Melding some universal issues that are not unique to Israel with others that have everything to do with it as a specific society works especially well in this format. Additionally, one hilarious scene finds David pulled over while driving, with all four members of the family, his son Omri (Noam Imber) included, fully aware that they are guilty of something and expecting to be the one caught for their transgression. To find out who is truly at fault, you’ll have to see the movie, which is extremely entertaining and engaging.

One Week and a Day is a somewhat more serious story of a couple that has just finished sitting shiva for their son following his death from a terminal illness. When their next-door neighbors stop by the day after the shiva has ended, it’s evident that both Eyal (Shai Avivi) and Vicky (Jenya Dodina) are at a loss as to how to move on with their lives. When Vicky goes to the cemetery, Eyal makes up an excuse about staying home to prevent burglary, and instead goes to the hospice where his son spent his final days in search of his lost blanket. What he finds instead is a bag of medical marijuana prescribed for his son, and he enlists the help of the dim-witted son of his neighbors, Zooler (Tomer Kapon, who won the Ophir award for this role), to roll the marijuana for him. As Vicky prepares to go back to her job and restart her life, Eyal retreats inside the house, smoking and playing with the adult child who was once his son’s best friend.

What One Week and a Day covers very deftly is the way that Jewish observance plays a part in secular life in Israel. The death of their son has not turned Eyal or Vicky into religious people, yet shiva is a process that they must go through anyway. The reaction that Eyal has to the end of the mourning period is one of total detachment from reality, smoking endlessly and hanging out with someone he thoroughly detests since he represents something close to the beloved son he has lost. This film takes a humorous approach to dealing with devastation, offering up many laughs in its portrait of grief. When the film finally does introduce dramatic elements, they’re all the more poignant and stirring.

Israeli’s recent success at the Oscars with multiple nominations for Best Foreign Film in the past decade demonstrates that the country’s cinematic industry is well-regarded and on the rise. Its coverage of cultural concepts and handling of the complex issues in the Middle East has been proven, and, if these two films are any indication, Israeli cinema is expanding beyond that to themes that just constitute enjoyable films that deal with everyday elements of life in moving and enthralling ways.  

Read more about the Israel Film Festival and check out the whole slate!

The post Israel Film Festival Spotlight appeared first on Jewcy.

One of last year’s breakout hits in Israel was Wedding Doll, the story of Hagit, a woman with a mild mental disability who works in a toilet paper factory. As she dreams of happiness with the owner’s son, she creates a wedding dress out of supplies from factory. We caught up with Nitzan Gilady, the director, who is in New York City promoting the film for its release this Friday, to talk about his experience making the film.

Jewcy: Is this your first time in the United States?

No, actually I lived here before, in the Village. I came to study theater. My dream was to become an actor, but when I finished, because of my looks, the only parts I ended up auditioning for were terrorists. That may not be politically correct to say, but it’s the reality. When I knew acting couldn’t work, I decided to take control of my life and pursue my other dream, to become a filmmaker.

Jewcy: Where did the inspiration for this film come from?

When I went back to Israel, one of the first things I did was a street theater show where I had three women wearing the same dress my main character wears with the toilet paper rolls. They were just walking the streets of Akko and searching for a husband. We took still photos, and one of them stayed with me for a while. I looked at the picture and said – who’s going to wear that dress? Where would she work? What is she like?

Jewcy: How did the character of Hagit come about?

It has a lot do with influences from my life. Ten years ago, we discovered that my brother suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. The whole family had to learn how to deal with it. My father was very protective, and he had to go through a process with my brother in front of the government to get it documented that he has that from serving in Lebanon in the Israeli Defense Forces. It was a very difficult time. I remember that my brother would tell me how he wanted to get married when he gets out, but after every date when he would tell girls that he has PTSD, they would just disappear the next day. It was hard to hear, and all these things came into the story.

Jewcy: How do you see the other characters in the film, like Omri, Hagit’s secret boyfriend, and Sara, her mother?

Omri is a good guy, but he’s kind of a chicken. He represents the majority of society. We still need to work on accepting people who are different from what is considered the “norm.” It’s almost like he’s in the closet. If you love somebody, it shouldn’t matter who it is. You’re supposed to express your love, and he’s not able to do that because he’s so influenced by his friends and society. His father loves Hagit so much, but he also can’t see the future and he wants his son to have a better life than him. If Omri is going to be with Hagit, it’s going to limit him. Parents have dreams for their children. Even Sara knows what won’t be accepted by society, but she’s also very reasonable. Hagit has all these dreams that are great, but she needs to know what the limit is so that she can still find happiness.

Jewcy: What, if anything, makes this a Jewish film?

What is Jewish? It’s your background, but it can be so many things. When I lived here and would go to synagogue, I wasn’t treated as a Jew because of my looks. I’m a Yemenite Jew. Most of the Jews in New York are Ashkenazim. There are so many ways of practicing Judaism. These characters’ roots are Jewish, but it’s never mentioned. They’re not religious Jews, so you don’t have prayers, but it’s Jewish, it’s universal.

Jewcy: Were you influenced by any other films about Jewish weddings?

I think I was a victim of all these romantic comedies. The film forces us to look at what we are presenting to our kids. Girls are always presented as princesses who are going to be rescued by a prince, and one day they have to get married. If we talk about Judaism, getting married is very Jewish. If you don’t get married by the age of thirty, you’re considered a leper. Marriage is beautiful and weddings are beautiful, but not everyone is supposed to get married. There are so many other ways to celebrate partnership. The character in my film is very influenced by all these films and what society is saying.

Jewcy: How has the film been received?

It’s unbelievable. It’s such a small film. The budget for shooting was only $200,000 USD. It won three awards at the Jerusalem Film Festival, including Best Debut Film. From there, we went to Toronto. Since then, I’ve been traveling with it all across the world. We got nine nominations for the Israeli Oscar, where it won for Best Actress and Best Costumes. For us to be nominated for Best Film is amazing and so lucky when we are standing alongside all these big films. You never know when you make a film where it’s going to take you. I have in my iPhone all the photos of where we’ve been and the screenings we’ve been to – this has all happened and it hasn’t even been a year! We’re premiering the film soon in Montreal, Portland, Miami, Los Angeles, and Austria, among other locations.

Most meaningfully, we had screenings for people with special needs, and they love the fact that the film talked about their life and offered the opportunity to talk about subjects that are not talked about, like sex, life, and work. It’s really special.

Wedding Doll is out in select theaters on Friday, April 15th.

When he’s not working with Jewish teens, Abe Fried-Tanzer can be found blogging away about movies and television.

Photos courtesy of Nitzan Gilady.

The post Jewcy Interviews: Nitzan Gilady on ‘Wedding Doll’ appeared first on Jewcy.

The year’s most accomplished, and most important, films about war, terrorism, and geopolitics aren’t Argo and Zero Dark Thirty. They’re two modestly budgeted films from Israel and the Palestinian Territories. And, unlike their American counterparts, they’re not drawing on true stories for blockbuster entertainment. No, they are the thing itself: blistering documentaries about life and death, violence and oppression, and the struggle to remain human in unbearable conditions. 5 Broken Cameras and The Gatekeepers are morality tales, as much of a warning for gung-ho Americans of the potential costs of their military adventures as they are stark indictments of the Israeli occupation and its effects on Palestinian life.

Now, both 5 Broken Cameras and The Gatekeepers are nominees for the Academy Award for Best Documentary, to be awarded this Sunday in Los Angeles. That two of the five films nominated in this category are highly critical of Israeli security policies—and the politicians who oversee them—reflects a stark change in Hollywood’s treatment of Israeli cinema. From 1964 through 2006, only six Israeli films were nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, and none won (a film must be first submitted; being a nominee in this category is the equivalent of being a finalist). During this time, Israel had a single documentary nominated for an Academy Award—The 81st Blow, a 1974 film about the oppression of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe.

That began to change in 2007, with the Foreign Language Film nomination of Beaufort, a tale of brotherhood and valor in the last days of Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon. Beaufort was followed by Waltz with Bashir, a dark look at the trauma of IDF veterans who served in Lebanon and their complicity in the Sabra and Shatila massacre. (Due to the Academy’s picayune rules, Waltz with Bashir, while ostensibly an animated documentary, was submitted under the category of Best Foreign Language Film.) In 2009, Ajami, a grim story about forbidden love and clan violence in Jaffa, was also a nominee. Co-directed by a Christian Palestinian and a Jewish Israeli, the film represented a further victory for Israel’s progressive film industry.

But labeling these films as Israeli has proved problematic. In 2010, Scandar Copti, one of the directors of Ajami, strongly rejected the notion that he represented Israel: “The film technically represents Israel, but I don’t represent Israel. I cannot represent a country that does not represent me.” And more recently, Emad Burnat, the co-director of 5 Broken Cameras, objected to his film being called Israeli.

Burnat has a point. 5 Broken Cameras is almost entirely his production. He spent years filming the nonviolent protests in his village of Bil’in, where residents struggle with the encroachment of the separation barrier and the calving off of land for Israeli settlements. Burnat had some assistance from Israeli director Guy Davidi, but Burnat did the bulk of the cinematography, contributed the narration, and is the documentary’s star. It’s his story. And while the film received some government financing, Burnat isn’t an Israeli citizen; he’s a Palestinian living under Israeli military occupation. (Ajami also received some support from the Israeli government.)

The Academy doesn’t distinguish between nationalities for the documentary category, which is why two “Israeli” films can be nominated at once. But they are an important pairing—not the whole story of the occupation, but two essential pieces of it. With patience and steely determination, 5 Broken Cameras leads us through the daily humiliations of attacks from the army and settlers, night raids, the arrests of children, and the difficulty of staying nonviolent amidst an excruciating situation. We see the birth of Burnat’s son, Gibreel, and hear some of his first words: the Arabic terms for shells and soldiers.

The Gatekeepers, in turn, offers unprecedented admissions from six retired heads of Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, all of whom issue startling critiques of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians. “We are making the lives of millions unbearable,” says Carmi Gillon, who also relates his pain at failing to protect Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin from a right-wing Jewish assassin. “Suddenly it becomes a kind of conveyor belt,” says Ami Ayalon, about the practice of targeted assassinations. At the end of the movie, he laments, “We win every battle, but we lose the war”—words that highlight the ultimate futility of what one former Shin Bet chief calls “tactics without strategy.” All of these men, including the iron-fisted Avraham Shalom, advocate negotiating with enemies, from Hamas to Ahmadinejad.

These films, too, represent a kind of negotiation, one that would have us move beyond antique binaries of victimhood and victory. By nominating 5 Broken Cameras and The Gatekeepers, the Academy is spurring a dialogue that started only after decades of laureled films about European Jewish survival and Israeli might. These are much different movies than Exodus, Schindler’s List, or Munich. They’re about guilt, justice, dignity, and the limits of violence; they’re about the long hangover of war and the mature demands of statehood. Kathryn Bigelow, who calls herself a “lifelong pacifist” while in the same breath praising the bravery of those prosecuting the war on terror, would do well to watch.

Previous Kvetches: The Many Sides of ‘Yossi,’ Eytan Fox’s New Film
Beyond Nepotism

The post Culture Kvetch: Israel at the Oscars appeared first on Jewcy.

Last we saw Yossi, he was in mourning. It was the end of Yossi & Jagger, Eytan Fox’s 2002 film about two young IDF soldiers in love—an affair that ended when Lior, called Jagger by Yossi, died in an infantry operation gone wrong. Their love was practically an open secret among their fellow soldiers but less so with Lior’s parents, who, in one of the film’s most bitterly sweet touches, are fooled by a female soldier’s claim that she and Lior were in love. The soldier, Yaeli, admits that she never got a chance to tell Lior her feelings, but she thinks that their affection was mutual all the same. The knowledge is some comfort to Lior’s mother, who admits that she never even knew her son’s favorite song. Yossi (Ohad Knoller), seething with repression and heartbreak, looks up and offers the answer: “Bo” by Rita. The film ends with his melancholic smile.

A decade later, the grieving young man has returned in Yossi, Fox’s minor-key sequel now premiering in the United States. By nearly all measures, we are a long ways away from the first film. Yossi & Jagger took place almost entirely on a snow-covered mountain in Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon. It appears to have been shot with a handheld, and the effect is less documentary than home movie—prone to jitters and unexpected close-ups, the colors washed out by sunlight bouncing off the snowscape. None of this is to the film’s detriment—although some viewers might find the aesthetic dated, even anachronistic for its time—as it creates a familial, informal atmosphere around the soldiers’ remote outpost. (The location, forbidding and snowbound, is not dissimilar from that of Beaufort, a glossier and more politically minded film that also starrs Knoller.)

Yossi, on the other hand, finds itself a world apart. Whereas our title character was once a confident, strong-willed, even dour commanding officer in the IDF, capable both in his duties and in his romantic life, Yossi has deteriorated in the years since. Now 33, he’s successful—a cardiologist at a Tel Aviv hospital—but he’s depressed, lonely, and without friends, save the garrulous Moti (Lior Ashkenazi), who is ecstatic about his impending divorce. Even more markedly, Yossi has added about 30 pounds, much of it to his belly and face, the latter now colonized by an ivy-like growth of scrub that, along with the premature crow’s feet and purple bags around his eyes, signals a man at his nadir.

Fox’s style has changed, too. Gone is the handheld camera, replaced by a smooth, shadowed approach that, particularly in the hospital’s antiseptic halls, highlights Yossi’s veritable lifelessness. When Yossi goes to the chic apartment of a man he’s met online—an Adonis living in the kind of brushed steel-and-glass enclosure that seems less like a living space than a habitable status symbol—he becomes nigh catatonic. Were you to encounter him on a beach, you’d have to poke him with a stick to find out if he were in fact animate. Or, as Moti tells him, “You look like an operating table.”

All this changes when Lior’s mother is admitted to the hospital and gets treated by Yossi. A reckoning with her and her husband follows. Yossi leaves town on an impromptu vacation (he’s never taken one) and, at a Negev rest stop, picks up some young soldiers on leave. He drives them the rest of the way to Eilat and falls in with them—or rather, falls for Tom (Oz Zehavi), a tanned, blue-eyed sylph. It seems improbable that Tom would be attracted to Yossi in return, but such unlikely unions, and the tangled emotional pathways that lead to them, are the basis of films like this one.

It’s easy to say that Yossi is about grief, depression, and repressed sexuality (there’s a pointed contrast with the far more liberated Tom). But in retrospect, I’m struck by how little the title character actually talks about these things, when he speaks at all. So much is communicated with a squelched remark or by the looks he gives Tom at a distance: pathetic and longing, but with some hope, secreted within like contraband. Such is the skill of Ohad Knoller, who adroitly inhabits both incarnations of Yossi. In fact, between this diptych, there are many Yossis: a clandestine but joyous lover, a brusque but respected soldier, an urban professional utterly adrift, and a man feebly searching for a way out of his own mind.

Both films show signs of the maudlin and the mannered, but they redeem themselves on the strength of Knoller’s acting. With Yossi, Eytan Fox has produced an unexpectedly moving sequel, one that doubles as a welcome entry to his filmography on gay life in Israel.

The post Culture Kvetch: The Many Sides of ‘Yossi,’ Eytan Fox’s New Film appeared first on Jewcy.