Israeli films to be shown at film festivals in Europe

In the 77th Cannes Film Festival that opens on May 14, there will be only one film from Israel taking part: the short film It’s Not Time For Pop by Amit Vaknin, which will compete in the La Cinef section.

The object of La Cinéfondation (the Film Foundation) is to “present and highlight films from film schools, whether fiction or animation, that reveal talent and deserve encouragement.”

Vaknin, a student at The Steve Tisch School of Film and Television at Tel Aviv University, made a film about a young woman who decides not to attend a memorial service for her father, who died in the 2006 Second Lebanon War.

“I didn’t write a film about grief,” Vaknin told Ynet. “It’s a film about a young woman who wants to deal with love but inherits death. I filmed the movie last September, and after October 7, I couldn’t touch the material and edit it. Only after a few months, I returned to editing. 

“Since the Gaza war and the terrible losses, the film can be interpreted differently and bluntly,” she said. “I didn’t intend to provoke anyone. I really hope people won’t be offended or feel uncomfortable by the film.”

While this is the only Israeli movie at Cannes, there will be movies of Jewish interest at the film fest. The most notable is Michel Hazanavicius’s animated feature The Most Precious of Cargoes, adapted from Jean-Claude Grumberg’s bestselling novel of the same name, which tells the story of a Jewish girl whose father throws her from a train heading to Auschwitz in order to save her life. 

Film about family history in World War Two

Hazanavicius, who is Jewish, said he was inspired to make it by his own family’s history during World War II. Jean-Louis Trintignant, the great French actor who died in 2022, provides the narration, and it was his last part. This film will be the first animated feature film to take part in the main competition since Ari Folman’s Waltz With Bashir in 2008.

For the first time this year, a movie from Saudi Arabia will be shown at Cannes in competition. Directed by Tawfik Alzaidi, it’s called Norah and is a love story set in the kingdom 30 years ago, when artists were banned from creating art due to religious law. The movie will be screened in the prestigious Un Certain Regard (a certain glance) competition that, according to the Sortir à Paris website, showcases “audacious and different” films.

Movies were once banned in Saudi Arabia, but the kingdom now has a growing film industry and allows foreign films to be shown in its theaters. It is also promoting itself as a destination for international filmmakers; it has 32,000 square meters of studio space and is building more.

On Monday, Keshet 12 announced that a news feature by Ben Shani that was shown on the Uvda (fact) news magazine hosted by Ilana Dayan will compete for the Golden Nymph Award in the Festival de Television in Monte-Carlo, taking place in June. The feature, released in November, is called Table for Eight. 

It tells the story of Abigail Mor Idan, the four-year-old Israeli-American citizen who was kidnapped into Gaza by Hamas terrorists after they killed her parents in front of her. She and her siblings, who also survived the attack, are now being raised by their aunt and uncle. This feature is one of the most moving that I have ever seen, and it can be viewed with English subtitles, in several parts, on the website, Stand4Israel (https://stand4israel.net/channel/Keshet+-+N12/320089972) or in Hebrew on Keshet.co.il