The Sam Spiegel International Film Lab will take part in the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, presenting 10 feature-film projects in development from Israel and around the world at one of the international film industry’s most prominent meeting points.
This is an especially auspicious honor at a time when anti-Israel sentiment is running high at many festivals. The Venice International Film Festival is one of the largest and most prestigious in the world, and Israeli films have been embraced there with enthusiasm in the past.
Samuel Maoz’s Lebanon, the story of a tank crew in the First Lebanon War, won the Golden Lion, the festival’s top award, in 2009, and Maoz was invited to meet Pope Benedict XVI. But in recent years, fewer Israeli films have been selected to participate.
The lab has been chosen to take part in the Venice Production Bridge, the festival’s industry platform, which connects filmmakers and producers with production and distribution companies, financiers, broadcasters, and major streaming platforms. The lab’s main event will take place on September 7 at the Hotel Excelsior on Venice’s Lido.
The 10 projects come from Austria, Brazil, Germany, Hungary, and Israel. In addition to the formal events, there will be plenty of time for the filmmakers to network at Venice, which is a major part of the development process for aspiring filmmakers. A reception for participants will be held the night before the presentation, attended by international film industry figures and festival guests.
Production prizes totaling $70,000, provided by the Beracha Foundation, will be awarded to outstanding projects.
The International Film Lab, run by the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem, develops feature films by emerging filmmakers from around the world, including Israel. Dozens of films from the lab have been shown at film festivals across the globe, many of them winning major awards.
Its alumni include a number of acclaimed international filmmakers, among them László Nemes, the director of Son of Saul, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2016, as well as the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
Israeli film holds record for Ophir Award nominations
Israeli films developed at the lab have also been produced. This year, Tell Me Everything, by Moshe Rosenthal, a graduate of the lab, leads the Ophir Award nominations with a record 16 nods. Last year, The Sea, by Shai Carmeli-Pollak, another lab graduate, won five Ophir Awards, including Best Film and Best Screenplay.
“The presence of the Sam Spiegel Lab at the Venice Film Festival for the second year is testimony to the connecting power of international creation,” said Dana Blankstein Cohen, CEO and executive director of the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School.
“The lab continues to insist on intercultural dialogue and building international bridges, and to fight for freedom of expression and artistic freedom,” she said. “Cinema has a real power to shape reality, and not only to reflect it.”
Blankstein Cohen said that Sam Spiegel sees its role as providing “a place for courageous dialogue, particularly in the complex climate in which we find ourselves,” adding that open discussion and a diversity of authentic voices and stories can foster “change, growth, and deep human connection.”
Sam Spiegel attendance at Venice festival is culmination of months of development
Mor Eldar, director of the Sam Spiegel Film and Television Labs, said the Venice event is the culmination of about 10 months of development work.
“After about 10 months of development, the 10 projects that participated in the film lab will meet the international film industry at one of the three most important festivals in the field,” Eldar said. She added that she was proud of the filmmakers and confident that the intensive work would yield results, pointing to the continuing success of alumni from previous years.
The Sam Spiegel International Film Lab is supported by the Beracha Foundation, the Edmond de Rothschild Foundation, the Sam Spiegel Foundation, the Shuster Polakoff Foundation, the Austrian Film Institute, Germany’s FFA, the Hungarian Embassy, the Institut Français, and other partners.