Wars may come and go, but the Jerusalem Film Festival, which will take place from July 9-19, is a welcome and enduring reminder of the power of cinema to illuminate our world.
The 43rd edition of the festival, which was founded by Lia van Leer to bring the best international films to Israel and to promote Israeli filmmaking, will take place at the Jerusalem Cinematheque and the Lev Smadar theater.
Roni Mahadav-Levin is the CEO of the Jerusalem Cinematheque and the executive director of the festival, and Orr Sigoli is the festival’s artistic director.
The festival will host more than 25 international guests this year, headed by acclaimed Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa, who will be the guest of honor and receive a special tribute at the festive opening ceremony at Sultan’s Pool on July 9.
Loznitsa, one of the most prominent voices in contemporary European cinema, will also serve as president of the jury for the Israeli Competition.
Lonitsa known for documentaries, features
The Belarus-born Loznitsa, who grew up in Ukraine, is known for both documentaries and features, among them My Joy, In the Fog, Maidan, A Gentle Creature, Donbass, State Funeral, Babi Yar, Context, and his latest movie, Two Prosecutors, which premiered in competition at Cannes.
Twelve of his films have been screened at the Jerusalem Film Festival, and he has won prizes there in the In the Spirit of Freedom and Chantal Akerman competitions.
The international jurors at this year’s festival will include German actress Corinna Harfouch; German director Angela Schanelec, who will also present her new film, My Wife Is Crying; French critic, curator, and film historian Nanako Tsukidate; Swiss director/screenwriter Lionel Baier; Jorge Stamadianos of Argentina, director of the Mar del Plata Film Festival; French producer Marc-Benoît Créancier, who will accompany The Impact, which he produced; Hélène Schoumann of France, president of the Israeli Film Festival in Paris; Isaac Zablocki, co-director of the Carole Zabar Center for Film in Manhattan and director of the Other Israel Film Festival; and Alissa Simon, senior programmer at the Palm Springs International Film Festival and a writer for Variety.
The Israeli jurors will be directors Roni Aboulafia, Nir Bergman, and Yona Rozenkier.
International guests accompanying their films will include Kai Stänicke of Germany with The Trial of Wine; Tamara Stepanyan of Armenia with In the Land of Arto; Benjamin and Jono Bergmann of Austria with Noga, about singer Noga Erez; Hungarian actress Anikó Für with Mother in Blue; French producer Carine Ruszniewski with The Golden Age; Czech director Ondrej Provazník with Broken Voices; German actress Sabine Thalbach with Sorry for the Disturbance; Polish director Rafael Kapelinski with Budapest Days; Czech director Jana Hojdová with Robert Richardson: The White Devil; US filmmakers Polaris Banks and Mor Cohen with And Her Body Was Never Found; German producer Sebastian Weyland with The Fall of Hercules; Russian director Sergei Borukhov with Foreign Lands; and US director Vincent Grashaw with Don’t Say a Word.
'Tell Me Everything' to be screened opening night
The opening-night film will be the Israeli premiere of Tell Me Everything, the new film by Moshe Rosenthal, at Sultan’s Pool. The film stars Assi Cohen, Keren Tzur, Yair Mazor, Ido Tako, Mor Dimri, and Neta Orbach, and will be screened in the presence of the filmmakers and actors.
Tell Me Everything had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, marking the first time in a decade that a full-length Israeli feature film was included in that festival.
It was produced by Green Productions and United King Films and tells the story of Boaz, who discovers a shocking secret just before his bar mitzvah about his father, Meir. Nine years later, Boaz sets out in search of his estranged father and is forced to confront the memories and choices that have haunted him ever since.
The total amount of prizes to be awarded in the Israeli and international competitions this year will be about NIS 1 million.
The Haggiag Competition for Israeli Feature Films will include Amal, directed by David Ofek and Nahd Bashir, which tells the story of a woman fighting to save her son and stop a cycle of revenge in her village, as clan violence spins out of control.
The Wedding Entertainer (The Tale of Moishe Badhan), directed by Gidi Dar, was written by Shuli Rand from a story by Rand and Dar, and stars Rand, Tal Friedman, Elon Gold, and Tzofit Grant-Rand.
It’s about a man who was once Jerusalem’s greatest party entertainer, whose alcoholism destroyed his career, as he battles to regain his past glory working for an American.
Ruthy Pribar’s What is to Come will have its Israeli premiere in Jerusalem. It stars Ronit Yudkevitz, Yaakov Zada Daniel, and Tovit Addis-Samai, and tells the story of Yehudit, who, after nearly losing her life, escapes to Eilat and tries to begin again.
The Diamond Competition for Israeli Documentary Films will include Find Me, OK?, directed by Yula Gidron, a moving and emotional film that documents two years in the lives of the mother and sisters of murdered hostage Eden Yerushalmi, who did everything they could to bring her back from Hamas tunnels, and after nearly a year of struggle, were forced to find a way to live without her.
The festival will also hold a special world premiere screening of David Fisher’s documentary The Survivor in a Tuxedo: In Search of Elie Wiesel. The film offers an intimate portrait of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, examining questions about ambition, memory, and the burden of bearing witness.
In a special tribute to Israeli film history, the festival and the Israel Film Archive will present restored digital versions of Uri Barbash’s classic prison drama that highlights issues of coexistence, and the short films Crows, by Ayelet Menahemi, and A Big Girl, by Nirit Yaron.
Movies that have won top prizes at festivals around the world will be included.
Cristian Mungiu, a Romanian director who is best known for the harrowing drama about abortion, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, won his second Palme d’Or, the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, this year for Fjord.
The movie stars Renate Reinsve of Sentimental Value and Sebastian Stan (The Apprentice), as a Romanian family living in Norway who are regarded by local officials with suspicion.
Ilker Catak’s Yellow Letters won the Golden Bear this year, the highest award at the Berlinale, the Berlin International Film Festival. It tells the story of a Turkish family who move to Istanbul after losing their jobs in their hometown and struggle to adjust.
If you are interested in masters of American indie cinema, two films will be particularly interesting. Steven Soderbergh, the unpredictable director of such films as Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Traffic, and Logan Lucky, has a new film, The Christophers.
It’s a black comedy about the adult children of a British artist (Ian McKellen) who hire a forger (Michaela Coel) to complete a legendary series of portraits the now dissolute artist never finished.
James Gray has a new film in the festival that was in the main competition at Cannes, called Paper Tiger. With Paper Tiger, Gray, who also made the Jewish coming-of-age story Armageddon Time, returns to the crime milieu in which he has set many of his films, to tell the story of two brothers who get involved with the Russian mob in the 1980s.
Miles Teller and Adam Driver play the brothers, and Scarlett Johansson plays the wife of Teller’s character.
Katie Aselton, a younger director who works with her husband, actor/screenwriter Mark Duplass, also has a new film in the festival, Their Town, which is about two teens who bond during a nighttime odyssey.
Films from some of the best-regarded filmmakers from around the world include Fatherland by Pawel Pawlikowski, about a road trip Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler) took with his daughter (Sandra Huller of Anatomy of a Fall) during the Cold War through the rubble of Germany.
French-Jewish directors Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano, known for their crowd-pleasing and moving films such as The Intouchables and The Specials, have a new movie in the festival, Just an Illusion. It stars Louis Garrel and Camille Cottin in a coming-of-age drama about a boy in suburban Paris in 1985.
Movies that explore history and Jewish identity are always a core part of the festival. This year, the festival includes a movie directed by Daniel Auteuil, an acclaimed actor known for such films as Jean de Florette.
He directed, co-wrote, and stars in When the Night Falls, which follows the incredible story of a 1942 effort to save over 100 Jewish children from a deportation camp just outside of Lyon.
Hungarian-Jewish director László Nemes is famous for his Holocaust drama, Son of Saul, and earlier this year he spoke out forcefully against antisemitism in the international film industry.
His latest film, Moulin, will be shown at the festival. It tells the story of Jean Moulin (Gilles Lellouche), who unites French resistance fighters under de Gaulle’s command after parachuting into occupied France and who was captured and tortured by Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie.
The Spirit of Freedom competition features films that deal with human rights and the quest for justice around the world. This year, it includes Skateboarding is Not for Girls, a movie by Dina Duma that won the Nora Ephron Award at the Tribeca Festival.
Set in Macedonia, it tells the story of an impoverished family that has to decide between living on the streets or selling off one of its daughters into an arranged marriage.
The Cinemania section shows movies about movies, and these include Robert Richardson: The White Devil, about the cinematographer who has worked frequently with Quentin Tarantino.
There will also be a new documentary about neorealist master Roberto Rossellini, and several of his films will be shown in the Classics section.
Another highly recommended film in the Classics section is the original 1957 Western 3:10 to Yuma, an adaptation of the Elmore Leonard novel, starring Glenn Ford and Van Heflin.
For more information and to buy tickets, go to https://jff.org.il/en