The 43rd Jerusalem Film Festival, which began on July 9 and runs through July 19, had a far more festive atmosphere than the previous two editions, which took place while the war with Hamas continued and Israeli hostages were still held.
So many screenings this year have sold out, and there was an excitement in the air, beginning with the opening screening at the Sultan’s Pool amphitheater, where 6,000 movie buffs watched the Israeli premiere of Moshe Rosenthal’s coming-of-age drama, Tell Me Everything.
The garden behind the Jerusalem Cinematheque, where the festival was held (with additional screenings at the Lev Smadar theater), was filled with people drinking cocktails and having freshly made pizzas throughout the festival.
But, as we all know, the war isn’t exactly over, and title cards before each screening told audiences where to take shelter if a missile alert were heard during the festival, and several new Israeli films grappled with the war.
One of these was the documentary Find Me, Okay?, by Yula Gidron, which was shown in the Diamond Competition for Full-Length Israeli Documentaries, about the kidnapping and murder of the hostage Eden Yerushalmi from the Nova Festival, and the ordeal her family endured while she was held in Gaza and how their suffering continues.
The title comes from the words Yerushalmi uttered to a police dispatcher as she fled the terrorists, and the movie details her family’s attempt to do just that.
Yerushalmi, who was 24 when she was kidnapped, was held for 11 months and spent much of that time in the tunnels alongside Carmel Gat, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Alex Lobanov, Almog Sarusi, and Ori Danino, the group that Hersh’s mother, Rachel Goldberg-Polin, dubbed “The Beautiful Six.”
Death of 'The Beautiful Six' at the hands of Hamas
They were shot to death at the end of August 2024, and their deaths sparked one of the largest demonstrations of the war, as about half a million people took to the streets all over Israel.
The film focuses on the struggle of Yerushalmi’s mother and sisters to keep her name in people’s minds. “Eden asked us to fight for her. If you were there, wouldn’t you want people to fight for you?” asked one of her sisters.
She also noted the absurdity of how they were urged to go to the US to lobby for her release, where American diplomats told them to go home and pressure the Israeli government. This close-knit family pulled together in the face of the agonizing situation, and their courage is as heartbreaking as it is inspiring.
Another film in the Diamond Competition, Hanan Brandes and Matan Sacofsky’s Good Morning, Gaza, a play on the title of the Robin Williams classic, Good Morning, Vietnam, focuses on a reserve tank driver who broadcasts an improvised podcast to fellow soldiers and tells their stories through radio interviews and raw combat footage from combat.
The movies in the Haggiag Competition for Full-Length Israeli Feature Films are probably the most closely watched in the festival, and those shown there have gone on to receive Oscar nominations and awards, including the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
The war was present in different ways in several of these movies. Two out of the six movies were about Israelis in Berlin, and these movies, Assaf Machnes’s Where To, and Hadas Ben Aroyo’s I Can’t Say No to Myself, were set just before and after the war began, and the characters find different ways to cope with the fallout from a conflict they would rather forget.
Where To is a two-character movie that explores the bond that forms between Hassan (Ehab Salami, who won an Ophir Award for Eran Kolirin’s Let It Be Morning) and Amir (Ido Tako, who has starred in such films as Tell Me Everything, The Vanishing Soldier, and the Netflix drama, Mary).
Hassan is a hard-working Palestinian cab driver who grew up in a village near Nazareth but had to relocate to Jenin, and eventually left for Germany to earn a better living. Amir is an Israeli whose father committed suicide and who came to Berlin to join his German lover.
Both are lonely and are searching for something to make them feel complete, and the friendship that develops between them is credible and touching. It shows a scene of young people partying in the city that runs parallel to the hard-working immigrants just trying to get by.
Humor in drama
The movie also contains what was an incredibly funny scene, when Hassan is talking to his cousin on speakerphone, while two Israeli passengers (Dov Navon and Sarit Vino Elad) are on board. Hassan and his cousin tease them by dropping words like “jihad” into their conversation, which has nothing to do with politics, and it’s funny to watch them try to keep their cool as they are actually terrified.
The scene everyone is going to talk about from I Can’t Say No to Myself features a young Israeli woman wearing nothing but panties, in a room full of three European men she is planning to have sex with, who sings “Hatikvah,” translating the lyrics into English and stumbling over the word for “yearning.”
It’s much funnier and less shocking than it sounds, partly because the characters spend much of the movie nude or in their underwear, so you are used to it by then. I’ll have more to say about this movie when it is released, but, like Where To, it is effective in conveying the aimlessness and hopes of young Israelis in Berlin, who want to forget what is going on at home but can’t quite manage it.
Two of the Haggiag movies are quiet, slice-of-life dramas that focus on people who often fall through the cracks. Ruthy Pribar’s What is to Come?, which had its world premiere at the Tribeca Festival, tells the story of a widow, Yehudit (Ronit Yudkevitch), whose farm has gone bankrupt.
Alone in her grief and feeling helpless to cope with her debts, she flees to Eilat, where she works as a maid in a small hotel run by Eli (Yaakov Zada Daniel), and bonds with a family of foreign workers.
Efrat Corem’s Heart of Gold is about a withdrawn bus inspector in Ashkelon, traumatized by horrific childhood abuse and neglect, who finds an abandoned baby and takes him home rather than going to the police. Chen Amsalem Zaguri, Israeli Atias, and Menashe Noy star in it.
The final two feature films were from communities whose voices are heard less often on screen: Arabs and the haredim (ultra-Orthodox).
Amal is a collaboration between directors David Ofek and Nahd Bashir and screenwriter Sharon Azulay Eyal, and tells the story of a brave woman (Rebecca Esmeralda Telhami), who lives in an Arab village in the north and rebels against the blood feuds that have taken the lives of so many of the villagers and tries to save both her family and the whole village’s future.
Shuli Rand and Gidi Dar have collaborated on many films, notably Ushpizin, and their latest movie, The Wedding Entertainer (The Tale of Moishe Badhan), may be their best ever.
The fable-like movie, which premiered at the Tribeca Festival, is a meticulously plotted, beautifully acted comedy-drama about a once-famous haredi wedding entertainer (Rand) whose career was derailed by alcoholism, and his search for redemption. American actor/comic Elon Gold co-stars, and even those who have no knowledge of this world will be charmed.
The Israeli movies shown at the festival will be released in theaters and shown on television in Israel throughout the coming year, and many will also be shown at film festivals, mainly Jewish and Israeli ones, around the world.