36th Israel Film Festival in Los Angeles celebrates the Jewish state's cinema

The 36th Israel Film Festival in Los Angeles will take place from November 13-26, and its founder and executive director, Meir Fenigstein, said he hoped that 36 would be an especially lucky number, as it is in Jewish tradition.

“The festival was postponed three times, first because of COVID and last year because of the war,” he said. “So we have great films from the past few years that we weren’t able to show before, plus all the latest Israeli films. It’s our biggest festival ever, and it will be our best.” This year’s festival will show 40 movies, including features, documentaries, and short films. 

He said he felt it was especially important to celebrate the Israeli film industry during this tragic war. 

“We’re not forgetting about the hostages and the soldiers for one second,” said Fenigstein. “But we still need to come together and enjoy the great movies being made in Israel.”

In addition to his work at the festival, Fenigstein is a musician who was the drummer in the Israeli supergroup Kaveret and was nicknamed Poogy after a character he portrayed in comedy skits over the years. Fenigstein started the festival in 1981 when he was a student at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, thinking it would be nice to show some Israeli films there at a time when virtually none were shown in America. The festival has grown into a huge event that has been held in many cities over the years, including New York, Miami, and Chicago, in addition to Los Angeles. Altogether, he has put together 78 editions of the festival, he said. 

Given the rise of antisemitism in the US, this would seem to be a difficult year to promote any event with the word “Israel” in its title, but he declined to discuss this in any detail. “We always have good security,” was all he would say. 

Instead, he emphasized that the festival appeals to all kinds of Angelenos: “The Israel Film Festival has always maintained an environment of mutually respectful discussion and viewpoints as well as nonpartisanship... Festivalgoers represent the diverse communities of Los Angeles who want to be both educated and entertained by a selection of powerful and exciting Israeli films that offer a great window into Israeli culture.”

The festival’s opening-night gala will feature the West Coast Premiere of Tom Nesher’s Come Closer at the Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills. Come Closer won the Viewpoints Award at the Tribeca Festival and the Ophir Award for Best Picture, which means it is Israel’s official selection to be considered for a nomination for a Best International Feature Oscar. 

In addition to the Best Picture Award, it won a Best Actress Ophir for Lia Elalouf, and Best Director for Nesher. It tells the story of a troubled young woman who is drawn into an increasingly close relationship with her deceased brother’s girlfriend after his sudden death. Nesher is one of many directors who will be attending the festival and there will be Q&A sessions after some of the screenings. 

At the opening ceremony

At this year’s opening ceremony, Ynon Kreiz, Mattel chairman and CEO, who has transformed the company and spearheaded its global blockbuster film, Barbie, will be presented with the 2024 IFF Industry Leadership Award. Actor/Comedian Shaike Levi will receive the 2024 IFF Lifetime Achievement Award at the closing-night ceremony.

“This year’s two festival honorees are extraordinary and renowned leaders in business and the arts. Ynon Kreiz, who has revolutionized Mattel into an esteemed juggernaut, volunteered at the festival over 30 years ago when he was a university student at UCLA. The legendary comedian/actor Shaike Levi has been bringing joy and laughter to generations of audiences in Israel.”

The festival chairwoman is Michelle Sobrino-Stearns, CEO and Group Publisher of Variety and the honorary chairman is Arnon Milchan, founder of New Regency, who produced such Oscar-winning films as Birdman, The Revenant, and 12 Years a Slave.

This year’s festival centerpiece will be a sneak preview of Erez Tadmor’s Soda. The movie tells the story of a beautiful seamstress (Rotem Sela) who moves to Tel Aviv in the 1950s and is rumored to have been a Nazi collaborator. A former World War II resistance fighter (Lior Raz) is torn between his passion for this mysterious woman and his feeling that he must reveal the truth about her past to the rest of the community. Tadmor based the movie on his grandfather’s life. Tadmor’s most recently released film, Matchmaking 2, a comedy about dating in the ultra-Orthodox world that is the sequel to his 2022 Matchmaking, will also be in the festival. 

OTHER ISRAELI movies that premiered in 2024 that will be shown at the festival include Halisa, directed by Sophie Artus, about a nurse played by Noa Koler, who has been trying to get pregnant and ends up caring for the baby of one of the young women she treats; Maya Dreifuss’s Highway 65, the story of a tough, tactless police detective investigating a murder in a small town, starring Tali Sharon (Srugim) and Idan Amedi, a musician and star of Fauda who was wounded fighting in Gaza; and Maya Kenig’s The Milky Way, a dystopian black comedy about a young mother who sells her breast milk to a wealthy family. 

Several movies that were released over the last two years but not shown in the US due to the pandemic and the war will be screened. Ayelet Menahemi’s Seven Blessings tells the story of a Moroccan woman who was given to her childless aunt to raise and who has to come to terms with the emotional fallout of this tradition when she gets married. The movie won 10 Ophir Awards in 2023, including Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actress (Reymonde Amsellem), and Best Supporting Actress (Tikva “Tiki” Dayan). 

The Monkey House, the latest film by Avi Nesher, one of Israel’s leading filmmakers who happens to be Tom Nesher’s father, will be shown. It tells the story of a once successful novelist (Adir Miller), who tries to revive his fading career by launching a highly inventive scam, and co-stars Suzanna Papian.

Amit Ulman’s The City is the first Hebrew rap opera, and it’s a darkly funny film noir story of a detective fighting a criminal mastermind.  

The competition for student films will include The Boy by Yahav Winner, which received an Ophir Award for Best Short Film. Winner was murdered by terrorists at his home in Kfar Aza on October 7 and managed to distract them enough to allow his wife and baby to escape.

For the first time, the festival will have a panel of Israeli-American producers who will discuss the co-productions between the US and the Israeli film industries. This private event is sponsored by the Israel Cinema Project-Rabinovich Foundation. 

Festival screenings take place around the city, including at the Laemmle Royal Theatre (West Los Angeles) and the Laemmle Town Center 5 (Encino). For more information and to buy tickets, go to the website at israelfilmfestival.com  

Reflecting on the logistical difficulties of putting together this year’s festival, including the difficulty of finding flight tickets for guests from Israel during the war, Fenigstein admitted that he sometimes thought of retiring, but decided it wasn’t time yet. He repeated a piece of advice that he keeps in mind when he works on the festival: “You have to be blessed. And you have to continue.”