URBAN TALE (Maasiya Urbanit) Director: Eliav Lilti Category: Feature Film Production: Shai Werker, Eliav Lilti. Supported by the Yehoshua Rabinovich Foundation for the Arts - Project Cinema / Israel 2012 Language: Hebrew. Subtitles: English Length: 90 minutes
Synopsis: Two teenage brother and sister, whose mother died a few weeks earlier, are in search of their father. Their quest leads them to hospitals, nursing homes and holding cells. In the course of the quest, they meet people who provide them – like in parallel quantum universes – a glance into what their future lives may hold for them.
''Urban Tale'' is an impressive cinematic experimental film, with a profound sense of aesthetics and ingenuity. Based on a true story, this independent film is unique in its cinematic storytelling. It is provocative and controversial but yet extremely gentle and delicate in touch, thus it is thought provoking, penetrating mind, body and soul.
Cast: Barak Friedman, Noa Friedman, Ohad Knoller, Zohar Strauss, Esti Yerushalmi, Ami Weinberg, Eli Gurnstein, Avi Greinik, Michal Stamler, Irit Bandak, Orna Rotberg, Sharon Stark, Noa Koller, Alex Peleg, Yitzhak Hizkiya, Gedalia Besser.
GEI ONI (Valley of Strength) Director: Dan Wolman / Based on the novel by Shulamit Lapid / Israel 2010 Category: Feature Film Production: for IBA1, Channel One, Israel. Language: Yiddish, Hebrew, Arabic. Subtitles: English / French Length: 105 minutes
Synopsis: The story of “Gei Oni” is an historical epic which interweaves the story of the first wave of Jewish European migration to Palestine, at the end of the 19th century, with an unusual love story between Fania, a young Russian immigrant, and Yechiel, a native Jew.
Seventeen-year-old Fania, her baby daughter, her elderly uncle, and her emotionally impaired brother arrive at the port of Jaffa, having survived a pogrom in which all other members of their family were killed. Having no real choice, Fania marries Yechiel, a widower whose wife died of malaria, leaving him to care for their two children himself. The two set out to a small settlement near Safed, where Yechiel and a few other daring settlers are trying to cultivate the barren lands which they bought from local Arabs. Fania is burdened by a harrowing secret she is unable to share with anyone else. but unless her husband Yechiel shares her secret, their marriage cannot be consummated.
Cast: Tamar Alkan, Zion Ashkenazi, Ya'akov Bodo, Levana Finkelstein.
MY MICHAEL (Michael Sheli) Director: Dan Wolman / Based on the novel by Amos Oz / Israel 1975 / 2009 Category: Feature Film Production: New Digitally Remastered version Language: Hebrew. Subtitles: English / French Length: 83 minutes
Synopsis: "My Michael" (Mon Michaël) is a sensitive film set in the divided city of Jerusalem of the early 1950's. It tells the story of a tormented Hanna and her stolid, dutiful husband, Michael. Hanna who tries to find a way out of her bourgeois life and marriage through self destructive fantasies, imagines sending her childhood friends, Arab twins, on a commando raid of her city – Jerusalem. This psychological, provocative film based on a bestselling novel by Amos Oz, won many prizes and created quite a controversy when first released.
Cast: Oded Kotler, Etrat Lavie.
Festivals & Awards:
Travelling Jérusalem : Rennes Métropole's Film Festival - France 2009
Winner: Best Film Award : David's Harp Awards (Israeli Oscar) - Israel
Winner: Best Director Award : David's Harp Awards (Israeli Oscar) - Israel
Winner: Best Script Award : David's Harp Awards (Israeli Oscar) - Israel
TIED HANDS (Yadaim Kshurot) Director: Dan Wolman / Israel 2006 Category: Feature Film Language: Hebrew, English. Subtitles: English / French Length: 90 minutes
Synopsis: The film tells the story of a sensitive and complex relationship between a mother and her ailing son. Like in Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tale “The Loveliest Rose in the World” where a child is looking for a rose to save his mother, the queen who is in bed dying, so in “Tied Hands” in a reversal of roles a mother goes out on a desperate search for a little Marijuana, to ease her son's pain. In her, turbulent, journey in the streets of Tel-Aviv, old truths from her past come back to life and threaten to break down a wall of denials behind which, she's been hiding all her life.
Cast: Gila Almagor, Ido Tadmor.
Festivals & Awards:
Winner: Best Feature Film Award : Palm Beach International Film Festival - USA 2007
Winner: Best Performance Award (Gila Almagor) : Palm Beach International Film Festival - USA 2007
Winner: Special Acting Award (Gila Almagor) : Jerusalem International Film Festival - Israel 2006
Nominee: Best Director (Dan Wolman) : Israel Academy Awards - Israel 2006
Cycle ''Tel Aviv'': Forum des Images, Paris - France 2009
BEN'S BIOGRAPHY (Ha'biografia Shel Ben) Director: Dan Wolman / Israel 2003 Category: Fiction Film Language: Hebrew. Subtitles: English / French Length: 93 minutes
Synopsis: Ben is strange: he walks around with gloves and is always carrying shopping bags in both hands. He meets Tamar, who is intrigued by his secret. Slowly, they become friends. Ben doesn't want anyone to pity him. His way of dealing with his pain is through his imagination, zany humor and laughter. "Ben's Biography" deals with the very sensitive subject of child abuse. Sounds grim? It's not! The film is moving and unusually funny.
Cast: Gal Zaid, Sharon Alexander, Avigail Arieli, Gani Tamir.
Festivals & Awards:
Winner: Platinum Remi Award: Worldfest Houston International Film Festival, Texas - USA 2007
Winner: Best Feature Film - Audience Choice : Mediterranean Film Festival Algarve - Portugal 2006
Winner: Best Actor Award : Mediterranean Film Festival Algarve - Portugal 2006
Retrospective: Bangalore International Film Festival (BIFFes) - India 2009
DEAR MR. WALDMAN (Mi'htavim Le'America) Director: Hanan Peled / Israel 2006 Category: Feature Film Production: Yoav Halevy: Open Doors Films/Tmuna Communication Ltd.; Supported by the Israel Film Fund, Keshet Broadcasting, Wexstrust Capitol, Globus Group, Kolnoa Investments. Language: Hebrew. Subtitles: English / French Length: 86 minutes
Synopsis: In the early sixties, Hilik, ten years old boy who lives in Tel Aviv, knows he and his brother's goal in life – to make his parents happy and compensate for the grief and lost they had suffered in the holocaust. Moishe, Hilik's father, chooses to believe that his lost son, from his first marriage, didn't die in Auschwitz as he thought, and somehow escaped to America to become President Kennedy's assistant. As he has never really accepted the fact that he is the only survivor from his family, Moishe is sinking back to his past. Torn between his fear that his father would abandon him, and the wish to make him happy, Hilik chooses to test his father's love to him, while accepting the risk of losing him.
GOD'S SANDBOX (Tahara) Director: Doron Eran / Israel 2002 Category: Feature Film Production: Yoav Halevy: Open Doors Films/Tmuna Communication Ltd.; Supported by the Israel Film Fund and IBA1, Channel One, Israel. Language: English,Hebrew, Arabic. Subtitles: English / German Length: 86 minutes
The horror of female circumcision in the Bedouin tradition is explored in this challenging film. The film is starring: Israeli-Arab actor Juliano Mer-Khamis, who was shot to death in Jenin in 2011.
Synopsis: Liz, a successful author arrives at a beach in the magical Sinai Desert in search of her daughter Rachel who ran away. Liz decides to stay at the beach despite her daughter’s objections and meets with a Bedouin storyteller. It is here that she learns of the unusual love story of Leila – a Western tourist – and Najim, the son of a Bedouin Sheik. This extraordinary love story, that took place many years before on the same exotic beach, began to fall apart after the expulsion of Leila and Najim from his tribe. While wandering alone in the desert, Leila is exposed to a traumatic female circumcision ceremony that horrifies her and shatters the love story. Liz, captivated by the love story, undergoes a journey of psychological torment, during which her daughter Rachel discovers surprising facts about her mother’s life.
DELAYED REACTION (Tgoova Meuheret) Director: Samuel Calderon / Israel 2004 Category: Fiction Film Language: Hebrew, Arabic. Subtitles: English / French / Spanish / German / Arabic / Russian Length: 94 minutes
Synopsis: Menny, a 33-year-old DJ, is forced to face both his past as an Israeli officer during the War in Lebanon, and his present, when he finds himself in a psychiatric hospital following a mental breakdown. The colorful characters he encounters in the hospital, as well as, his caring ex-wife Karin, assist him in putting the pieces of his life together
A LIFE'S WORK (Mifal Hayim) Director: Gadi Nemet / Israel 2003 Category: TV Drama Language: Hebrew, French. Subtitles: English / French Length: 61 minutes
Synopsis: Ya'acov Binyamini, a successful businessman, returns to the collective village (kibbutz) he left many years ago. Binyamini is interested in acquiring the kibbutz's bankrupt cosmetics factory. Hilik, who considers the kibbutz factory his life's work, is forced into a final battle against all odds, involving the disintegrating kibbutz society as well as, the heart of his wife Dorit, Binyamini's first love.
Cast: Samuel Calderon, Irit Gidron, Tzachi Noy, Yonatan Cherchi.
Festivals & Awards:
Dignity and Work International Film Festival Gdansk - Poland 2004
Israel Film Festival - New York, Los Angeles, Chicago - USA 2004
Toronto Jewish Film Festival - Canada 2004
Southern Film Festival Sderot - Israel 2004
FIPA International Festival of Audiovisual Programs - Selective market - Biarritz - France 2004
Official Selection: Festival de Cine de Granada - Spain 2004
Silver Remi Award: Worldfest International Film Festival Houston Texas - USA 2004
