Bedouin director wins top prize at Jerusalem Film Festival

The 41st Jerusalem Film Festival announced the winners of its competitions at a ceremony on Thursday. The prizes made history because the Haggiag Award for Israeli Feature Films, the festival’s top award for Israeli features, went to Yousef Abo Madegem’s Eid, the first full-length movie made by a Bedouin director.

Movies by Arab directors have won top prizes at the Jerusalem Film Festival before, but this is the first time a film by a director from the Bedouin community has received this honor.

The movie tells the story of a construction worker from Rahat, the largest Bedouin city in the Negev, who has literary aspirations and resists his parents’ decision to marry him off to an uneducated woman. At its premiere screening on Sunday, Abo Madegem said he had worked on the movie for a decade, adding that he has 10 children, “and this film is like my 11th.”

The judges said they chose the film “for its sensitive, completely mature, and authentic portrayal of the preservation of one’s own self-respect in a rigid environment bound by traditions in contradiction with painfully unfulfilled love, yet leading to reconciliation and forgiveness.”

Shadi Mar’i, whom television viewers from around the world recognized for his role in Fauda, won the Anat Pirchi Award for Best Actor. The judges said they chose Mar’i “for a completely convincing portrayal of the main character, all his conflicting emotions, along with a sensitive understanding of his defiance, pain, and hope.”

Come Closer by Tom Nesher won the GWFF Award for Best First Feature. It tells the story of a young woman whose brother is killed in an accident and examines how she copes with her grief. The judges said Come Closer was “a moving and profound search into the conflicting emotions and struggles experienced through loss, from opposing views and characters, who come to terms and reunite, even as they’re forever changed and inhabited by loss. The script, the precise directing, the remarkable editing, the casting, and the healing music subtlety. Of course, the performances, especially by Eden, Maya, and Eden’s mother are heartbreaking, yet they shine throughout. All these elements combined bring the film to masterful maturity.”

Last month, Come Closer won the Viewpoints Award at the Tribeca Festival in New York.

Love, loss and history

The lead actress in Come Closer, Lia Elalouf, won the Anat Pirchi Award for Best Actress. The jury said she had received the award for her “sensitive and profound portrayal of the most difficult moments in every person’s life, which is the loss of a close and deeply loved being.”

The Anat Pirchi Award for Best Screenplay went to Maya Kenig for The Milky Way, her black comedy about poor young mothers in Tel Aviv who sell their breast milk to the wealthy. The judges said the film was “an original idea, the industrial exploitation of mother’s milk is turned into a complex, biting, social satire and becomes a metaphor for mother-child bonding on the emotional level.”

The Ensemble Award went to Yuval Shani’s Youthful Grace, which starred Ido Tako, Amitay Shulman, Moris Cohen, Hilla Vidor, Adam Gabay, Swell Ariel Or, and Hitham Omari.

Maya Dreifuss’s Highway 65 won a Special Mention for its story of a tough, female detective investigating a murder in Afula. It stars Tali Sharon and actor/singer Idan Amedi, who was badly wounded fighting in the current Gaza war.

The Diamond Award for Best Documentary went to The Governor, directed by Danel El-Peleg. “The film opens a dark chapter in the history of Israel, in relation to its Arab-Palestinian citizens,” the judges said. “The director, the granddaughter of the protagonist, courageously reveals her grandfather’s deeds while masterly interweaving history with candid revelations of his private past.”

The Diamond Award for Best Director went to Shakked Auerbach for Strange Birds, which looks at a girl and her brother, who is on the autism spectrum.

The Nechama Rivlin Award for Best International Film went to The Story of Souleymane, directed by Boris Lojkine, which tells the story of an African migrant in France. The judges said it was “a film full of humanity, masterfully crafted, that never hits a false note.”

Best Director Award went to Emanuel Parvu for Three Kilometers to the End of the World.

The In the Spirit of Freedom Competition gave its Cummings Award for Best Feature Film to Ghost Trail, directed by Jonathan Millet, who said: “Through a brilliant and exciting script and phenomenal acting, the film skillfully leads us into the depths of the dark and tormented soul of a Syrian refugee, who is looking for justice, revenge, and redemption.”

The MKR Award for Best Documentary went to The Invasion by Sergei Loznitsa.