Israel Cinema Day to premier an array of unreleased Israeli films

There will be a new Israel Cinema Day on Wednesday, at which more than 40 recent and unreleased Israeli movies will be shown in theaters around the country for just NIS 10 per ticket.

It’s an initiative of the Culture and Sport Ministry and will come just after the Ophir Awards, the movie awards of the Israeli Academy for Film and Television, which will be presented on Monday night. Most of the films nominated for Ophirs have not yet been released – it’s always done like this for some reason – and curious moviegoers will have a chance to see both the winners and other nominees before they officially hit theaters.

Tom Nesher’s 'Come Closer' led the Ophir nominations with 12, in all the major categories, and it will open in theaters the day after Israel Cinema Day. Another upcoming movie, 'Eid', the first full-length drama by a Bedouin director, Yousef Abo Madegem, which won the top prize at the Jerusalem Film Festival, is also nominated for multiple Ophir Awards, and tells the story of a construction worker in Rahat with literary aspirations. Beloved actress Rivka Michaeli stars in Dana Modan’s The Property, based on a graphic novel by Rutu Modan, which is about a grandmother bringing her granddaughter to reclaim family property in Warsaw.

Erez Tadmor

The prolific director Erez Tadmor has two upcoming films showing: 'Soda', a story about a beautiful seamstress (Rotem Sela) who moves to Tel Aviv in the 1950s and is rumored to have been a Nazi collaborator, which also stars Lior Raz; and 'Matchmaking 2', a sequel to his previous comedy about dating in the ultra-Orthodox world.

Check individual theaters for the schedule.