A number of film festivals are coming up in Israel in the near future, some in person and some online: Docaviv, the Tel Aviv International Documentary Festival; the Cinema of the South Festival; the Arava International Film Festival; and the Haifa International Film Festival. Docaviv, the Tel Aviv International Documentary Festival, announced recently that it would feature an online film festival from September 3-12. Its management also said it would add a live component the moment that restrictions due to the novel coronavirus crisis are lifted. Docaviv will feature over 20 new Israeli film premieres, on a wide variety of subjects. The offerings include Avida Livny's Murder at Cinema North, about how the fates of several very different people intersected when bullets were fired into a queue of moviegoers outside Cinema North in Tel Aviv in 1957; Nurith Aviv's Yiddish, about young Israelis' love for Yiddish poetry; Maya Sarfaty's Love It Was Not, a true story about a romance between a Nazi officer and a Jewish prisoner; Gad Aisen's Rockfour: The Time Machine, the story of a major Israeli band; Ilan Yagoda's Tuning, a look a the piano at the Tel Aviv Central train station and those who play it; Duki Dror's Lebanon – Borders of Blood, about the conflicts in that country that have so recently been back in the news; and Roni Aboulafia's Honorable Men, a look at former prime minister Ehud Olmert's rise to power and fall from grace. The International Competition, Panorama sections and short and student film competitions all feature the best of recent documentary cinema from around the world, and there are also special sections devoted to the arts and to music. Among the international films are Margaret Atwood: A Word After a Word After a Word is Power by Nancy Lang and Peter Raymont; Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band by Daniel Roher; and Oliver Sachs: His Own Life by Ric Burns. In addition, there will be many special events, including master classes and Q&As with the directors of the films shown at Docaviv. THE 19TH CINEMA of the South Festival in Sderot will be held from September 10-17 and will be a combination of screenings at a drive-in complex and online streaming. The festival, which is an initiative of the School of Audio and Visual Arts at Sapir College, the municipality and residents of Sderot and the Sha'ar Hanegev Regional Council, will present a program of debut films from filmmakers from all over the world, including Israel. These will include actress Yael Abecassis's El Bidaoia, a portrait of her mother, Raymonde, who is the queen of Moroccan song in Israel. Film critic Marilyn Venig will look at 20 years of ultra-Orthodox cinema and place it in the context of both haredi life and Israeli cinema. There will be many other programs, including two short-film competitions. The 9th Arava Film International Festival announced Sunday that it will take place on schedule from November 5-14. This festival, which is always held under the stars, plans to hold its screenings outdoors, in accordance with Health Ministry regulations. If the rules change substantially before the festival, it will be held in a nearby desert drive-in complex. The program has not yet been announced, but the head of the Arava Tichona Regional Council, Dr. Eyal Blum, together with Eyal Shiray, a producer and founder of the event, decided that despite the coronavirus situation and the need for budget cuts, they are committed to continuing the tradition of screening great cinema in this beautiful natural setting. Many guests who attended in previous years, from Israel and abroad, have already said they would be willing to attend this year's festival, including Alberto Barbera, director of the Venice International Film Festival, who was the festival's guest last year. The Haifa International Film Festival, is scheduled to be held for the 36th time from October 1-10, but at press time its management had not yet made an announcement on how it would proceed and whether or not it would be postponed. The Jerusalem Film Festival, which was set to take place in July, postponed until August and then postponed a second time, until December. Festivals around the world are coping with the crisis differently. The Venice International Film Festival will be held in person in September but “in a more restrained format.” The Toronto International Film Festival, the largest film festival in North America, is combining a scaled-down in-person festival with online screenings in September. Audiences hungry for quality films will find a way to enjoy these festivals, in spite of the uncertainty of the COVID-19 era.
