Highlights from the 41st Jerusalem Film Festival: debuts, diverse voices, and emerging talents

Although the 41st Jerusalem Film Festival, which ended Saturday night, took place in the shadow of the war and the hostage crisis, it presented a diverse array of new Israeli movies, from an equally diverse group of filmmakers.

Another important point about these filmmakers is that several were making their directorial debuts in this festival, meaning that as the Culture Ministry and the creators’ unions continue to fight over funding allocation – a conflict that was showcased at one of the festival’s panels on the future of Israeli cinema – exciting new talents are emerging.

Some of Israel’s best films have premiered at the Jerusalem Film Festival, including Eran Kolirin’s The Band’s Visit, Ronit Elkabetz and Shlomi Elkabetz’s To Take a Wife, Joseph Cedar’s Campfire, Samuel Maoz’s Lebanon, Matan Yair’s Scaffolding, and Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani’s Ajami. 

This year’s strong crop of films showed that this competition is still a showcase for Israel’s most talented directors, both veterans and newcomers.

Come Closer

Speaking of newcomers in the competition, Tom Nesher won the Viewpoints Award at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year with her first feature film, Come Closer, and it’s a dazzling debut, a riveting film that tells a moving story of love and loss. Coming-of-age films tend to be from a male point of view, but Come Closer has a female protagonist and tells of an obsessive bond between two young women forged out of love and loss. 

Outside of Israel, people won’t immediately wonder if Tom Nesher is related to Avi Nesher, one of Israel’s leading filmmakers – she is his daughter – and they won’t know that key aspects of Come Closer are inspired by her own life. In Tribeca, clearly, the jury that gave the movie its award was not interested in these backstories, and may not have known about them at all. 

Come Closer is about Eden (Lia Elalouf), a troubled but privileged young woman in Tel Aviv who loses her younger brother suddenly – as Nesher lost her brother, Ari Nesher, in a tragic accident in 2018 – and finds herself drawn to the girlfriend (Darya Rosen) from a more modest background he kept hidden from the family.

Elalouf and Rosen seem poised to become stars from these performances and I think that the movie will speak to younger audiences in a way that virtually nothing at the movies does these days. But viewers of all ages will connect to this beautifully told story of grief and redemption that has an assurance rare in first-time directors, with electrifying imagery and a pulsing score that puts you squarely in the heroine’s world and mindset.

Eid

Another exciting debut is Eid by Yousef Abo Madegem, the first full-length movie directed by a Bedouin (the movie Sharquiya by Ami Livne won the top prize in Jerusalem and was about Bedouin, but was directed by a Jew). Eid tells the story of a young man, played by Shadi Mar’i, best known for Fauda, who gives a brilliant performance here as a Rahat construction worker with literary aspirations, struggling with the trauma of a sexual assault he suffered, and fighting his parents, who pressure him to marry an uneducated woman. 

To say that this gracefully told film shatters all stereotypes many of us have about the Bedouin is an understatement. But it isn’t a film that should be seen because it is the first movie by a Bedouin, but because it’s a fascinating movie about a young man who represents no one but himself. It’s full of plot and stylistic surprises and wonderful supporting performances, many by first-time actors from the Bedouin community, as well as such veteran actors as Ashraf Barhom and Hisham Suliman.

THE OTHER two standout movies in this competition are by directors both named Maya making their second feature films, but their two new movies couldn’t be more different from each other. Maya Kenig’s The Milky Way is a wildly inventive, bitterly funny comedy that finds laughs in an only slightly dystopian vision of contemporary Tel Aviv. It tells of a world where wealthy parents can subscribe to a kind of breast-milk bank, where poorer women sell their milk to support their families, a 21st century version of 19th century wet nurses. 

Musician Hila Ruach plays Tala, a singer who has just become a single mom and has no other good options when it comes to making money. Tala is a likable, bumbling character, who could be the younger cousin of the three women in the anthology film Tel Aviv Stories (1992) and it made sense to learn that Ayelet Menahemi, one of the directors on that film, edited the script for The Milky Way. 

Hadas Yaron, recently seen in We Were the Lucky Ones, portrays an entitled young mom who is one of Tala’s customers. While having a baby is a joyful time, it can also be unspeakably stressful, especially for those who face financial problems, as well as emotional issues and this movie tells the truth about the stresses of motherhood. This is a movie I can see being remade in countries all over the world, because of the universality of its story.

Highway 65

Maya Dreifuss’s Highway 65 is a kind of movie I don’t remember ever seeing at the film festival before: a neo-noir murder mystery. It’s extremely entertaining, in the way that many of the crime dramas on Israeli television are, although there is something to be said for telling a mystery that gets solved in less than two hours rather than 10 or so episodes. 

Tali Sharon, whom many will always remember fondly as Hodaya on Srugim, plays a police detective posted to Afula after she got into conflict with her bosses in Tel Aviv. If you can imagine Liz Lemon, the heroine of Tina Fey’s TV series 30 Rock as an Israeli detective, then you’ve got an idea of what Daphna is like. Her clothes are filled with food stains and she often forgets to wipe the tehina off her mouth when she eats falafel. 

She is given the minor tasks no one wants on her new beat, like getting a cell phone back to its rightful owner. Only as she investigates, she learns that the young woman, Orly (Anastacia Fein) who owns the cell phone has gone missing, and that the young woman was involved with a vile, corrupt real estate family, which reminded me of Against All Odds. One of the sons of the rich family is played by actor/musician/war hero Idan Amedi, who lights up the screen with his star presence.

Yuval Shani’s Youthful Grace features a good performance by Ido Tako, who plays the lead in this story of a tormented young man who works in his mean uncle’s grocery story, but the script could have used a few more rewrites.

Neither Day Nor Night by Phinehas Veuillet starts out as the story of a Mizrahi family that is discriminated against by the Ashkenazi yeshiva establishment but then loses steam when it focuses on a single violent act that doesn’t illuminate this struggle.

Tropicana, by Omer Tobi, tells the story of a lonely supermarket clerk (Irit Sheleg) caring for her infirm mother and obese son and ignored by her husband, who finds herself joining a group of sexual swingers in the Arava. It’s slow-paced in a way that I think is meant to make the audience feel we’re shallow for wanting things to get moving, and, to amuse myself, I kept imagining the heroine as a character on the comedy series about a supermarket, Checkout.

You can expect all these movies to be opening in Israeli theaters next year.