Israeli creativity in the limelight with this year's Jerusalem Film Festival lineup

When Lia van Leer established the Jerusalem Film Festival 41 years ago, she envisioned it as a showcase for Israeli filmmakers as well as for international movies. The competitions for the best new Israeli films are the highlight of the festival, often featuring movies that go on to receive top honors around the world, including Oscar nominations.

This festival, which will be held at the Jerusalem Cinematheque from July 18-27, just announced the Israeli films that will compete in the narrative, documentary, short, and experimental film competitions.

The Haggiag Competition for Israeli Feature Films is arguably the most anticipated of all the festival’s programs. This year it will include both Israeli movies that have garnered acclaim at festivals abroad, as well as world premieres.

The films illustrate the diversity and professionalism of the Israeli film industry and show that even in a time of war and tragedy, Israeli creators continue to work.

Come Closer

Tom Nesher’s Come Closer recently won the Viewpoints Award at the Tribeca Festival in New York. Partly inspired by the death of Nesher’s brother, Ari, in an accident in 2018, it tells the story of a troubled young woman who becomes obsessed with her late brother’s girlfriend following his sudden death.

Starring Lia Elalouf and Darya Rosen, it is Nesher’s debut feature film, although she has made several short films and took part years ago in the Wim van Leer Competition for High School Students at the Jerusalem Film Festival. She is following in the footsteps of her father, acclaimed director Avi Nesher, who also started making movies in his 20s.

Omer Tobi’s Tropicana will take part in the prestigious Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, which opens on June 28, before being shown in Jerusalem. It stars Irit Sheleg as a cashier in a supermarket in a Negev town who is drawn into an underworld she never knew existed after the head cashier is murdered.

Dani Rosenberg, whose previous film The Vanishing Soldier won the top prize at the Haifa International Film Festival last year, has already made a new movie that takes place in the aftermath of October 7: Of Dogs and Men. It tells the story of a 16-year-old girl who returns to her home on Kibbutz Nir Oz to look for her dog following the massacre there.

The Milky Way

MAYA KENIG’S latest film, The Milky Way, was just screened as the closing movie at the Israel Film Center Festival in NY. It’s a dystopian, black comedy about a single mother in Tel Aviv who supports her child by selling her breast milk at an upscale milk dispensary. Among her previous films is Off-White Lies.

Youthful Grace by Yuval Shani, who co-directed the Oscar-nominated movie Ajami, tells the story of two teens who try to make sense of their lives in a world with no functioning adults just as the Passover holiday begins.

Tali Sharon, who was in Srugim, stars in Maya Dreifuss’s latest film Highway 65, about a policewoman in Afula investigating the disappearance of a war widow. Sharon also starred in Dreifuss’s previous film, She is Coming Home.

Eid by Yousef Abo Madegem is the first feature film directed by a member of the Bedouin community. It tells the story of a young man who was sexually assaulted as a child and dreams of opening a theater, and who faces a crisis when his parents announce they are arranging a marriage for him.

Neither Day Nor Night

Neither Day Nor Night by Phinehas Veuillet is about a high-school student from an observant Mizrahi family from France who is not accepted by an Ashkenazi yeshiva, and this rejection sets off a chain of events that changes his life.

Eight movies will take part in the Diamond Competition for Israeli Documentary Films. These movies include Taboo: Amos Guttman by Shauly Melamed, a look at the late Israeli filmmaker who chronicled the gay community and died of AIDS; Desert Laws by Ilan Moskovitch and Dan Bronfeld, about a Bedouin who devotes his life to mediating among rival clans and has to fight his own tribe’s eviction from its land; and Acclaimed and Ashamed – the Story of Yamin Messika by Yaniv Segalovich, about a director and social activist who led a cultural revolution by creating music videos with Mizrahi singers.

There will be a Diamond Competition for Short Films, special screenings of documentary films, and the Wim Van Leer Competition for High School Students.

The festival will also feature a digitally restored copy of Shimon Dotan’s 1986 film The Smile of the Lamb, an adaptation of the David Grossman novel, starring Makram Khoury, Tuncel Kurtiz, and Rami Danon.