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Ninet Tayeb in tune with tragic poet Tirza Atar Nony Geffen

Cast rocks with Nony Geffen’s Why Elephant

BY ANDREAS WISEMAN

Dudu Tassa, Sasson Gabai and Gaya Traub are attached to star alongside Nony Geffen in the actor-writer-director’s upcoming drama, Why Elephant.

The Hebrew-language drama, aiming for a November shoot, will see Geffen play a man who reinvents himself as legendary 1980s rock star Yossi Elephant after he is left traumatised by the Third Lebanon War. Supporting cast members will include Julia Levy Boeken, Yossi Marshek, Sandra Sade and Tzahi Grad. The production reunites Geffen with Laila Films producer Itai Tamir, who also produced Geffen’s 2012 debut Not In Tel Aviv, which won the Special Jury Prize in Locarno.

European co-producers on the project will include Frédéric Niedermayer of Moby Dick Films (France), Philipp Homberg and Hans Eddy Schreiber of Karibufilm (Germany) and Keren Cogan Galjé (Netherlands).

The Israel Film Fund has a w a rd e d $ 1 0 0 , 0 0 0 o f t h e $600,000 budget.

Producer Tamir told Screen International: “This film is more about identity than about war. It is in part an autobiographical film with Nony having been personally touched by elements of the story.”

Geffen stated: “The winter shoot will be a visual representation of the character’s state of mind. The urban landscapes and the vistas of the Golan Heights will testify to the confusion and non-military preparedness set against Israeli macho male desire. There will also be a strong sense of rock ’n’ roll and an alternative picture of reality in Israel in the 2000s.”

Laila Films’ credits also include Nadav Lapid’s Policeman.

BY ANDREAS WISEMAN

Israeli actress and singer Ninet Tayeb is attached to play the lead role in Dina Zvi-Riklis’s next film Poppies In October, about the tragic life of Tirza Atar, the daughter of Israel’s national poet Nathan Alterman and actress Rachel Marcus.

The joint production between Yifat Prestelnik Films and her husband’s Eran Riklis Productions, currently in advanced development and aiming for an April 2015 shoot, will unveil a trailer starring Tayeb to potential backers at Jerusalem Film Festival’s Pitch Point event on Monday.

The Hebrew-language drama,

set in 1977, charts the final days of poet and author Atar, who committed suicide aged 36 after spending much of her life trying to establish herself as a poet outside her father’s shadow.

The producers have already secured a portion of the estimated budget of $840,000 through a distribution deal with United King but will be looking for potential partners on the film including a European co-producer.

Zvi-Riklis, director of features including The Fifth Heaven and Three Mothers, said: “The Englishspeaking world had Sylvia Plath, and Israel had Tirza Atar. Long

before reality stars became cultural heroes, poets were the true celebrities.

“I’ve been intertwined with the character of Tirza Atar for the last two years, trying to decipher her delicate, lyrical soul, which never found its place in the world.”

Tayeb, who became widely known as the first winner of Kokhav Nolad (the Israeli version of Pop Idol), has starred in a number of hit local TV series and alongside Olga Kurylenko in thriller The Assassin Next Door.

The producers are collaborating with Atar’s son on the development of the film.

Israeli pop singer Ninet Tayeb has signed up to star as poet Tirza Atar in Poppies In October

Festival is 99% business as usual The festival is making very minor adjustments in the wake of security issues, but it is 99% business as usual. In addition to postponing the Sultan’s Pool gala of Dancing Arabs by one week, the festival has also made other scheduling tweaks.

The awards ceremony will now be held on Saturday night instead of Thursday. The Tuesday gala, which had been planned at the Rockefeller Museum in the Old City is being moved to the Waldorf Astoria.

There have been about 10 industry guests to cancel their trips — none of the film-makers or speakers have changed their travel plans.

Festival CEO Noa Regev said the festival team was “very excited” that the festival would carry on as usual. “Cinema provides a different perspective and those perspectives are especially needed at these times,” she said.

Wendy Mitchell

TODAY

Profile: Shira Geffen

FEATURE Fund times After a strong Cannes, Israel Film Fund’s Katriel Schory talks about building a sustainable industry » Page 4

PROFILE Self awareness Shira Geffen talks about Self Made, her surreal take on female identity and existence » Page 9

REVIEW On the road Gianfranco Rosi’s Sacro GRA is an impressionistic view of life on Rome’s motorway ring road » Page 10

Israeli audiences find Motivation

BY ANDREAS WISEMAN

Talya Lavie’s directorial debut Zero Motivation has gone down a storm at the Israeli box office, drawing 100,000 admissions after two weeks from only 20 screens — making it the best opening for an independent Israeli film in three years.

The darkly comic Tribeca Film Festival winner, which charts the everyday life of a unit of young, female Israeli soldiers, has beaten a number of Hollywood blockbusters.

Guy Shani, CEO of distributor Lev Cinemas, told Screen International: “It is a fantastic result given the complicated security situation and the World Cup.” An expansion could be on the cards in coming weeks.

Zeitgeist will release in the US. The Match Factory handles sales.

Lavie discusses her new film The Current Love Of My Life at Jerusalem International Film Lab today.

Lesson in the tease of trailers

BY ANDREAS WISEMAN

Israel is as susceptible to cat video crazes as any other country, but when it comes to crafting and showcasing film trailers, it still has a way to go.

This is the starting point for a JFF panel on Sunday (noon at the Cinematheque) about trailer craft in Israel and how the industry can better harness trailers as a viral marketing tool.

Six Acts director Jonathan Gurfinkel — who also has a background in commercials and music

videos — will speak in conversation with local journalist Yair Raveh.

Raveh told Screen International: “The general consensus has been that trailers haven’t been made well in Israel. They are often made quickly, late on and are released just a few weeks before a film’s release.

“The number of digital marketing and creative digital companies in Israel is growing but there are still too few servicing the film industry.”

Main picture: www.ninetayeb.com

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FRIDAY JULY 11 – SATURDAY JULY 12, 2014

UNITED KING FILMS

Exhibitors/Producers and Distributors of Israeli ďŹ lms present:

CLOSING FILM: Dancing Arabs Director: Eran Riklis

ISRAELI FILMS IN COMPETITION:

The Kindergarden Teacher Director: Nadav Lapid

Princess

Director: Tali Shalom Ezer

Self Made

Director: Shira Gefen

Cinema City Complex, Zomet Glilot, Ramat Hasharon 47100 P.O Box 9040. Tel: 03-6909999

Feature Jerusalem International Film Lab

The 2014 participants, back row from left: Nora Martirosyan (Armenia), Martin Repka (Slovakia), Gregory Rentis (Greece), Sanjeewa Pushpakumara (Sri Lanka), Amikam Kovner (Israel), Asa Hjorleifsdottir (Iceland), Ivan Marinovic (Montenegro). Front row from left: Assaf Snir (Israel), Talya Lavie (Israel), Aygul Bakanova (Kyrgyzstan), Gaëlle Denis (France), Ritesh Batra (India), Alamork Marsha (Israel)

the lab’s first prize in 2012, premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard this year and Nadav Lapid’s The Kindergarten Teacher, the 2012 runner-up, was given a special screening in Critics’ Week at Cannes in May. Lapid says: “I arrived at the lab with a script that was in a fairly advanced stage of development. I was fearful the advisors might try to put their stamp on the work but instead they gave sensitive advice and intelligent analysis… the latter also really helped when it came to actually making the film.”

Beyond blue sky The 13 film-makers due to pitch their Jerusalem International Film Lab projects today include Ritesh Batra, Talya Lavie and Nora Martirosyan.

Melanie Goodfellow reports on the lab’s focus on real-world projects

W

hen Indian director Ritesh Batra learned he had been accepted as a participant on the third edition of Jerusalem International Film Lab, he was taking part in a world tour promoting his international arthouse hit, The Lunchbox.

Bad timing? Not at all, says Batra, who seized the opportunity to develop Photograph, the tale of an unlikely romance between a poor photographer and a young girl from a wealthy Mumbai family.

“For me, it was gift. After The Lunchbox premiered in Cannes [in 2013] it was a busy time as I accompanied the film to festivals all over the world,” says Batra. “The Jerusalem set-up was great for me. They’re wonderful with deadlines and feedback. In the middle of all The Lunchbox craziness, I’ve been able to generate a screenplay thanks to the lab.”

Photograph is among 13 projects due to be presented today at the lab’s pitching event, offering some $80,000 in production prizes.

Jerusalem International Film Lab is an initiative of Israel’s respected Sam Spiegel Film & Television School. It launched in December 2011, with its first edition running through 2012.

“It’s a chutzpah project,” says Renen Schorr, founding director of the school, who was the driving force behind the lab’s creation. “We’re the only film school in the world

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‘The end game is to develop real projects that get made’ Renen Schorr, Sam Spiegel Film and Television School

(Right) jury chair Paulo Branco presents Veronica Kedar with the Beracha Foundation Award of $530,000 for Family, at last year’s Jerusalem International Film Lab

to have initiated a lab, in the full sense of the word, like Sundance and Torino. The aim was to support script development as well as help the projects go into production.”

Schorr notes that he expects a high level of commitment from the lab participants.

“We are highly demanding. We ask our mentors to be tough with the participants, not deal in platitudes if they think the work’s not there yet. We want them to get the shit out of the participants, and you can quote me on that,” he says. “The end game is to develop real projects that get made. The world is full of projects that never take off.”

The initiative is already yielding results.

Out of the 12 projects in the 2012 selection, six are finished films and three are in preproduction. Its influence is also being seen on the festival circuit. Ivory Coast filmmaker Philippe Lacote’s Run, which took

This year’s slate Aside from Photograph, other projects due to be unveiled in today’s pitching event include Territoria from Armenia’s Nora Martirosyan, The Swan from Iceland’s Asa Hjorleifsdottir, The Current Love Of My Life from Israel’s Talya Lavie, and Fig Tree from Israel’s Alamork Marsha.

Martirosyan’s Territoria won the ARTE International Prize at Cannes’ l’Atelier this year. Set in a remote region in the lower Caucasus mountains, it revolves around three characters connected by a desire to either remain in or flee the area.

Hjorleifsdottir’s The Swan, which won the VFF Talent Highlight Pitch at this year’s Berlinale, follows a neglected nine-year-old who is sent to the remote farm of distant relatives for the summer.

The Current Love Of My Life is the second feature from Lavie after Zero Motivation, which won the top prize at Tribeca this year.

Her new project revolves around a young Israeli musician in New York who hides in the ultra-orthodox community after he is pursued by the immigration authorities.

Ethiopia-born Israeli Marsha’s Fig Tree gives a rare insight into the modern-day exodus of Ethiopian Jews to Israel through the tale of a teenager from Addis Ababa whose family decides to take up the right of return in the early 1990s.

This year’s jury is presided over by Michele Halberstadt of French distribution and production company ARP and also features Cannes Critics’ Week artistic director Charles Tesson, Berlinale Co-production Market director Sonja Heinen and Berlin-based South African-Swedish director Pia Marais.

Other professionals attending include Titus Kreyenberg of German production company Unafilm, Caroline Benjo and Carole Scotta of France’s Haut et Court and Riina Sporring Zachariassen of Denmark’s Winds elov/Lassen. n

July 11-12, 2014 Screen International at Jerusalem 3

INTERVIEW KATRIEL SCHORY

Red Leaves

Feeding the industry After a thrilling year at Cannes for Israeli films, Katriel Schory, head of Israel Film Fund, talks to Edna Fainaru about the new, invigorated mood among the country’s film-makers

S

ix Israeli feature films and one Cinefondation short were showcased at Cannes Film Festival earlier this year and Katriel Schory, head of Israel Film Fund, describes it as affirmation the country now boasts a solid, sustainable film industry.

“I see it as an ongoing process that establishes Israel as a legitimate film industry, like Denmark or Iran,” he says.

“One year they may do a bit better and not so well the next, but they’re always there; a constant presence.”

Schory is one of the world’s most sought after specialists on film fund policy, and his influence in Israel extends well beyond Israel Film Fund. He points with pride to the different types of films now being made as Israeli film-makers increasingly work in a wide variety of genres, exploring stories and genres beyond the Israeli-Arab political conflict.

“Many of these new films deal with social issues, some of them are very tough films,” he says. “They come from deep inside.”

‘We now have to think in terms of niche audiences’ Katriel Schory

He is referring to upcoming projects including Sophie Artus’s Valley, Noam Kaplan’s immigration drama Manpower, Efrat Corem’s Ben Zaken and Bazi Gete’s Red Leaves, all backed by Israel Film Fund.

“More films are coming from the provincial areas,” Schory continues. “Ben Zaken takes place in a remote, very rough neighbourhood in Ashkelon, Red Leaves deals with the Ethiopian community in Rehovot and Valley was shot in Migdal Haemek.”

Notably, four of the six Israeli features in Cannes were made by women. “In the last three years, the fund has greenlit 14 projects directed by women,” says Schory.

4 Screen International at Jerusalem July 11-12, 2014

“This is not the result of a policy decision. The projects were simply very good and were selected on their own merit. I believe women are now more assertive on a big set and display the kind of leadership that is often needed in addition to talent. They fight for the kind of film they want to make. We also have 12 to 14 excellent women producers.”

Schory points to Talia Kleinhendler whose credits include Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani’s Oscar-nominated Ajami; Yuval Adler’s Bethlehem, which screened at Venice last year; and Nadav Lapid’s The Kindergarten Teacher, which screened at Cannes in May. Kleinhendler works regularly with leading directors such as Shemi Zarhin and Amos Kollek, and is preparing a new film called The Farewell Party, which Schory reveals has already attracted the interest of film festivals.

Tackling genre Israel Film Fund is also investing in genre films, such as Oren Carmi’s Goldberg & Eisenberg, Yuval Mendelson and Nadav Hollander’s Cats On A Pedal Boat

and Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado’s Big Bad Wolves.

“We realised that we now have to think in terms of niche audiences,” Schory says.

“This is a sign of the industry’s maturity.

We have reached the stage where we can say ‘audience’ is not a dirty word.”

The success of Talya Lavie’s Zero Motivation, a dark comedy about life for female Israeli soldiers at a remote army base, which won the best narrative feature award at Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year, came at a good moment: Israel Film Fund launched an initiative dedicated to comedies this year.

“We received 54 fully developed projects and we set up a completely different set of [script] readers to deal with them,” says Schory.

In his opinion, the Israeli system of two state-backed film funds for featurelength projects, Israel Film Fund and the Cinema Project (see sidebar, right), both overseen by the Film Council, works well for film-makers, as the funds are not allowed to invest in the same projects.

“The test of the public funding system is

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to trace and identify talent and stories.

Having two funds offers every filmmaker two doors to knock on,” says Schory. “In the case of Israel Film Fund, every project can be submitted three times, to three different sets of lectors, allowing film-makers more chances and reducing the risk of missing potential talent.”

Through the Film Council, the Israeli government invests $23m (ILS80m) in the Israeli film industry annually. Around 85% of this goes straight into production financing. Israel Film Fund supports 12-14 features a year. “There is enough room for personal subjects that stretch film language to the limit, but ideally there should be room for a couple of lighter films as well,” adds Schory.

While the fund’s policy right now is to back fewer projects with bigger budgets, Schory remains committed to supporting what he terms “the guerilla productions”, those projects he will finance up to $100,000. These could be from firsttime film-makers or veterans who have waited too long to have a full-scale script approved. Previous recipients have included Avishai Sivan’s The Wanderer, which screened in Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes in 2010; Sharon Bar-Ziv’s Room 514, which won a prize for best new narrative director at Tribeca Film Festival in 2012; and Amir Manor’s Epilogue, which screened at Venice in 2012.

With 17 international co-production agreements providing about one-third of the total investment in Israeli film production, many in the Israeli industry, led

by Schory, believe the country now urgently needs a promotional export body to showcase the finished product, along the lines of Unifrance and German Films. It is a role Schory has previously taken on informally — for all Israeli titles not just those backed by Israel Film Fund. Now, as the Israeli industry grows rapidly in stature, it i s a ro l e h e believes needs full-time s attention. ■

THE CINEMA PROJECT In addition to Israel Film Fund, the second governmentsupported film fund is the Cinema Project, which is part of the Yehoshua Rabinovich Foundation for the Arts. Of the six Israeli films shown in Cannes this year, the Cinema Project backed four: The Go-Go Boys, The Kindergarten Teacher, Next To Her and That Lovely Girl. With an annual budget of $7.8m (ILS27m) — $5.8m (ILS20m) of which is invested in features — it has a wider mandate than Israel Film Fund and also supports shorts, documentaries and TV dramas.

“We are looking for quality that will appeal both to Israeli and international audiences,” says Giora Einy, head of the Cinema Project. “We offer up to $580,000 (ILS2m) for features with a budget of more than $875,000 (ILS3m). Our main purpose is to come up with the best possible product that will have a better chance of prevailing in the international market.”

The Cinema Project’s most recent credits include Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado’s Big Bad Wolves, Amos Gitai’s Ana Arabia, and Dror Moreh’s Oscar-nominated feature documentary The Gatekeepers. It has also backed André Singer’s documentary Night Will Fall, about the discovery of post-Second World War footage about the concentration camps, worked on by Alfred Hitchcock.

That Lovely Girl

The Go-Go Boys

The Kindergarten Teacher

Bethlehem

Next To Her

July 11-12, 2014 Screen International at Jerusalem 5

SPECIAL GALA SCREENING 12/7

JERUSALEM FILM FESTIVAL

Feature documentaries

Fresh selection The festival is showcasing a strong crop of Israeli documentaries, which bring a fresh approach to non-fiction. Melanie Goodfellow reports

T

he legacy of the Fukushima disaster, Final Solution architect Heinrich Himmler, new immigrant angst and a pitbull rescue centre are among the many worlds explored in this year’s Israeli Documentary Competition.

“We were focused on both the film language and the subject matter. We wanted films that were both fresh in the way they were shot but also challenging socially or intellectually,” says film-maker Anat Zuria, who was on the four-person selection committee for the festival’s documentary strand.

The 15-title selection kicks off today with a sold-out premiere screening of film-maker and journalist Uri Misgav’s Life Of Poetry: The Story Of Avraham Halfi.

Combining interviews with friends and archive footage, the film explores the life of the publicity-shy late poet, described by Misgav as an “anonymous hero”, whose work Your Forehead Is Decorated formed the basis for one of Israel’s most popular Hebrew songs.

Other contenders include Yossi Aviram’s The Polgar Variant, Tor Ben-Mayor’s Fringe Story, Michal Kaphra and Deva Oz Melman’s 36 Views Of Fukushima, Robby Elmaliah’s The Unwelcoming, Hilla Medalia’s The Go-Go Boys and Vanessa Lapa’s The Decent One. “36 Views Of Fukushima is an incredibly intense yet quiet exploration of the catastrophe and the suffering it caused… it has beautiful cinematography and is quietly moving,” says Zuria, whose own women’s rights-focused documentaries include Black Bus and Purity: Breaking The Codes Of Silence.

“The Unwelcoming is an unusual tale about a Tunisian Jewish family that moves to Israel but misses the Arab world they left behind. Another film which was voted in unanimously was Pitbulls Flesh & Blood. It’s a sort of thriller about an outsider who risks his life to save dogs caught up in the fighting world,” she adds.

The Polgar Variant charts the tale of Jewish Hungarian chess prodigies Judit, Susan and Sofia Polgar — who were part of an educational experiment by their parents in the 1970s and went on to become chess grandmasters.

It marks Aviram’s first feature-length

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European tour with a show inspired by a sculpture of the Warsaw Ghetto Fighters.

Medalia’s The Go-Go Boys captures the rise and fall of legendary Israeli producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus; while Lapa’s The Decent One is an in-depth portrait of Himmler based on letters, photos and notebooks that mysteriously ended up in the hands of a holocaust survivor and came to light in 2011.

The Go-Go Boys premiered in Cannes and The Decent One at the Berlinale, following a long line of Israeli documentaries to do well on the global stage.

“The film went down really well in Berlin,” says Philippa Kowarsky of documentary sales company Cinephil, which is handling The Decent One.

Fringe Story

The Unwelcoming

documentary after his fiction feature debut The Dune, starring Niels Arestrup as a police officer investigating the identity of a mysterious mute Israeli man found on a French beach, which premiered internationally to critical acclaim at San Sebastian last year.

“Yossi is happy to move between the two mediums,” says producer Amir Harel of Lama Films, the Tel Aviv-based production house that also has fiction credits such as Paradise Now, Jellyfish and $9.99. “The film draws heavily on archive material from across Europe, especially the Hungarian state archives, to build up the story,” he adds.

Emmy Award-winning Ben-Mayor’s Fringe Story, which also gets its world premiere at the festival, follows the Israeli Orto-Da fringe theatre group on a

Life Of Poetry: The Story Of Avraham Halfi

The Decent One

Addressing difficult issues “It’s amazing that a small place like Israel makes so many films and so many good films. Why that is, it’s difficult to say… it’s not just the place, it’s also that Israeli film-makers deal with difficult issues straight on — not just about the conflict but also Israeli society, looking at everything from orthodox societies to gay rights to the gulf between Sephardi and Ashkenazi communities,” says Osnat Trabelsi, head of the Israeli Documentary Forum, the professional body gathering all local doc-makers.

Respected producer Trabelsi does not have a film in competition at Jerusalem this year but has spent the past nine months touring festivals with Keren Shayo’s Sound Of Torture, about kidnapped Eritrean refugees who are held in terrible conditions in the Sinai Desert.

Alongside the competition and sidebars such as In The Spirit Of Freedom and The Jewish Experience, docs will also be at the heart of a conference entitled ‘Cinema as Rumour’, revolving s around films about film-makers. n

36 Views Of Fukushima

July 11-12, 2014 Screen International at Jerusalem 7

Ruth Diskin Films is proud to be a sponsor of the Jerusalem Film Festival for the 12th year in a row Best of luck to our film

THE POLGAR VARIANT

by Yossi Aviram

which is participating in the Documentary Competition Congratulations to all those taking part in the Jerusalem Film Festival 2014

Always Breaking Through….

is proud to present:

Our films at the Jerusalem Film Festival

LINA MANGIACAPRE AWARD: VENICE FF

THE DECENT ONE

Vanessa Lapa

16.7 21:00

BERLINALE 2014

Directed by

Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi

UKRAINE IS NOT A BROTHEL

Directed by

Kitty Green

CATHEDRALS OF CULTURE

Directed by Wim Wenders, Michael Glawogger, Michael Madsen, Robert Redford, Margreth Olin and Karim Ainouz

17.7 19:00 | 18.7 10:00

André Singer

Directed by

16.7 14:30 | 17.7 19:15

Directed by

THE 50 YEAR ARGUMENT

BERLINALE 2014

AUDIENCE AWARD: SXSW 2014

14.7 19:30 | 17.7 18:15

NIGHT WILL FALL

15.7 18:30 | 19.7 15:30

SHEFFIELD DOC FEST

VESSEL

Directed by

Diana Whitten

18 Levontin St. Tel Aviv, 6511207, Israel | Tel. +972.3.5664129 | Fax +972.3.5601436 | info@cinephil.co.il | www.cinephil.co.il

16.7 20:45 | 17.7 12:30

HONORABLE MENTION: SHEFFIELD DOC FEST

Profiles

By Sarah Cooper

Israeli brother and sister film-making duo Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz have written, directed and produced Gett: The Trial Of Viviane Amsalem — the third film in their trilogy following To Take A Wife (2004) and Seven Days (2008) — which had its premiere at this year’s Cannes Film Festival in Directors’ Fortnight.

“To Take A Wife explored a woman’s internal dialogue, in Seven Days she is in the middle of her family and society, and in the new film we put this woman in front of the state and the law,” says Shlomi of the trilogy, which was conceived by the brother and sister in New York in 2004.

“It’s a unique point for us, finishing this film and also closing the circle with our heroine, Viviane, who we’ve dealt with for the last 10 years,” adds Shlomi, who also directed 2011’s Testimonies.

Gett centres around the divorce system in Israel, which only allows a woman to divorce if her husband agrees to it. “Every day I was in shock working on this. It’s difficult to understand, in the democratic way we live in Israel, that this is still the law,” says Ronit, who also stars as the lead in all three films.

“I hope it will evoke a serious conversation and of course we will be acting on

By louise tutt

Shira Geffen’s Self Made is witty, surreal take on female identity and existence in modern-day Israel and Palestine, but the director did not realise she had made a comedy until the critics g guffawed with laughter during the Critics’ Week screenings in Cannes earlier this year.

“I’d worked on it for years and just didn’t feel the fun part,” she says.

“It’s hard for me to watch it and be objective. So when I went to Cannes and showed it for the first time, I was very happy.

The humour is built in; it’s ironic, not jokes. The strongest way to say something is by making people laugh as people accept it that way.”

Self Made is her second directorial outing following Camera d’Or winner Jellyfish, which she made with husband Etgar Keret in 2007. It is a witty, fantastical tale about the flimsy grasp we have on our own identities. It tells the story of two women, one an Israeli artist, played by

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Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz Gett: The Trial Of Viviane Amsalem

it when the film is out in Israel. It will put it into people’s awareness,” adds Shlomi.

Funded partly by the Israeli Film Fund, the project was produced through Shlomi’s Israel-based DBG Films, which he set up in 2010. “For me, producing is an adventure; it was really interesting to understand that part of the film and I enjoyed it,” he says.

The brother and sister are no strangers to Jerusalem Film Festival, as Seven Days won the best feature award in 2008. Now the pair are working on a new project that is at the script stage. “It was always our dream to work together. We cast together, we rehearse together; 99% of our choices we see eye to eye,” says Shlomi.

(Left) Ronit Elkabetz stars in Gett: The Trial Of Viviane Amsalem; (above) the sister-brother team of Ronit and Shlomi

Shira Geffen Self Made

(Main picture) Self Made; (above) Shira Geffen

Jellyfish star Sarah Adler, the other a Palestinian factory worker, played by Samira Saraya, the rising star of an Arab TV series. The women begin living each other’s lives on opposite sides of the border, and in very different socio-economic circumstances, after a mix-up at a checkpoint — but no-one around them notices.

As the director and her family are famous in Israel — Geffen’s father is a TV and film composer and poet, and her brother is a rock star — she was curious to explore the difference between a person’s public persona and their real one. “What interests me is the difference between the person people think you are and who you really are, and how society uses you to be who it wants you to be,” she says.

The other major influence on Geffen was her time as part of a group called Women’s Watch who silently observe the border crossings between Israel and Palestine, bearing witness to everything that happens. The pivotal moment in the film takes place at a border checkpoint, a location that crystallises the social and political tensions of the Arab-Israeli conflict. “I was there for a very short time but it was a very strong experience,” she says.

July 11-12, 2014 Screen International at Jerusalem 9

REVIEWS

Reviews edited by Mark Adams mark.adams@screendaily.com

Wakolda Reviewed by Mark Adams

Sacro GRA Reviewed by Lee Marshall With only his third feature-length film, Italian-American director Gianfranco Rosi’s status as one of the most interesting documentary makers on the scene can no longer be doubted. Sacro GRA — which won Venice’s Golden Lion — is his most compassionate and strangely satisfying work to date, an impressionistic mosaic of life lived on the margins of a large Italian city, assembled via the fly-on-the-wall observation of a handful of characters who live or work near Rome’s motorway ring road, the Grande Raccordo Anulare, or GRA — here punningly presented as a ‘Holy Gra’.

The result of a two-year shooting schedule and eight months in the editing room with top Italian editor Jacopo Quadri, Sacro GRA airs the same fascination with outsider lives as Below Sea Level, his 2006 study of Slab City, a community of trailer-dwelling social outcasts in the California desert. Sacro GRA’s charms have much to do with the director’s selection of a brace of engaging or kooky characters.

But they also derive from the way he juxtaposes them in a work that has a persuasive emotional rhythm, alternating moments of pathos, drama and gloom with a vein of sometimes quirky, sometimes laugh-out-loud humour that mostly makes it across the subtitle barrier.

Sure, there’s none of the shock-value of Rosi’s last film, El Sicario — Room 164, a feature-length interview with a hooded Mexican drug-cartel hitman that picked up some limited theatrical engagements outside of the festival circuit. But Sacro GRA has the feelgood factor to make up for its lack of body blows, and might even be sniffed at by distributors who took note of the success a few years back of a very different film, Mid-August Lunch. There is a market for quirky, fresh portraits of Italy that take viewers to places that tourists never normally go.

Apart from a short opening caption that explains what the GRA is, and refers to it as Rome’s “Ring of Saturn”, Rosi’s film dispenses with narrative comment. Its method is simply to show and tell, weaving in the stories of five main characters with scenes of traffic on the road.

n 10 Screen International at Jerusalem July 11-12, 2014

International documentaries It-Fr. 2013. 93mins Director Gianfranco Rosi Production companies Doclab, La Femme Endormie, Rai Cinema International sales Doc&Film International, www.docandfilm.com Producer Marco Visalberghi, from an idea

by Nicolo Bassetti Cinematography Gianfranco Rosi Editor Jacopo Quadri

A gently striking and achingly tense drama, Lucia Puenzo’s impressively made Wakolda is set against the beautifully bleak backdrop of Patagonia of 1960 where an intense Nazi physician seeks to get close to a model Argentinian family who reawaken his dark obsession for genetic purity and perfection.

Based on her own novel, writer/director Puenzo (whose acclaimed film XXY won the Grand Prix of Cannes Critics’ Week in 2007) uses rumours and myths around infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, who spent time in the remote Argentinian region of Bariloche where he worked as a veterinarian and secretly continued his research, buying blood samples of pregnant women.

Puenzo’s fascination with the period and the Argentinian government opening its doors to many Nazis is evident as she crafts an atmosphere of secrecy and mistrust in among the German-speaking community, some of whom clearly have deep, dark secrets.

The film could have played like a conspiracy thriller, but Puenzo favours subtle and slowly evolving drama, gradually revealing the darker and dangerous character of the seemingly genial German doctor Helmut Gregor (Brendemühl), who turns out to be Mengele.

He meets an Argentinian family in Patagonia, and intrigued by their daughter Lilith (a strong performance by newcomer Florencia Bado) follows them on their desert journey to Bariloche where Eva (Oreiro) and Enzo (Peretti) and their three children are set to open a lodging house. The family intrigues Mengele, especially when he finds Eva is expecting twins (he experimented on twins during his time in the concentration camps).

The drama builds with the arrival of photographer Nora Eldoc (Roger), who takes a keen interest in the medic, making secret reports by telephone in Hebrew.

Alex Brendemühl is chilling as the deadly doctor, though what is more disturbing is the notion of this German community protecting a war criminal and seeing him as part of a deadly elite. The Patagonian locations add a great deal to the stark and intriguing atmosphere.

The Jewish experience Arg-Fr-Sp-Nor. 2013.

94mins Director/screenplay/ producer Lucia Puenzo Production companies Historias Cinematograficas, Pyramide Production, Wanda Vision, HummelFilm International sales Pyramide International, www.pyramidefilms.com Executive producer Nicolas Batlle Cinematography Nicolas Puenzo Editor Hugo Primero Music Daniel Tarrab, Andres Goldstein, Laura Ziaman, Dirty Three Main cast Alex Brendemühl, Natalia Oreiro, Diego Peretti, Elena Roger, Guillermo Pfening, Ana Pauls, Alan Daicz, Florencia Bado

Screenings, page 12

Calvary Reviewed by Tim Grierson

Black Coal, Thin Ice Reviewed by Dan Fainaru The unadorned, unflattering, raw and lifelike portrait of a mid-size northern Chinese town in winter, all frozen over and covered in thick layers of snow, is the best thing in Black Coal, Thin Ice (Bai Ri Yan Huo), the new film from Diao Yinan (Night Train). What’s missing is a solid, well-told plot to keep audiences alert and justify the painstaking trouble taken with the background.

The film — which won Berlin’s Golden Bear — is a mystery story presented almost exclusively from the point of view of an ex-cop, and dealing with a series of grisly murders, with the victims’ bodies chopped to pieces and spread over a large territory, hundreds of miles apart.

Divorced policeman Zhang Zili (Liao) is seriously wounded and two of his colleagues are killed while attempting to arrest a couple of culprits suspected of committing the first in this series of crimes. Once released from hospital after a long convalescence, he is retired from the force, takes a job as a security guard and drowns his frustration in alcohol.

Five years later, after meeting Wang (Yu), an old colleague who is now a police inspector, Zhang finds out that more crimes of the same kind have gone unsolved and decides to investigate, if only to give a sense to his empty existence.

All the victims seem to have been connected at some time with the same woman, Wu Zhizhen (Gwei Lun Mei, looking forlorn, lost and melancholy), who works in a small laundry.

He tries to approach her, inevitably falls in love with her but, once a lawman always a lawman, and he goes on digging for new facts and information that might reveal the truth.

Major leaps of faith are required to follow the story.

You have to ignore all the red herrings strewn throughout, and once the case seems to be solved, there is a coda, the plot twisting itself around once more for the final revelation, before ending in a spectacular display of fireworks.

Panorama

Chi. 2014. 106mins Director/screenplay Diao Yinan Production companies Jiangsu Omnijo Movie Company International sales Fortissimo, www. fortissimo.nl Producers Vivian Qu, Wan Juan Executive producers Bu Yu, Daniel Jonathan Victor, Han Sauping, Hong Tao, Hang Xiaoli Cinematography Dong Jinsong Editor Yang Hongyu Production designer Liu Qiang Music Wen Zi Main cast Liao Fan, Gwei Lun Mei, Wang Xuebin, Wang Jingchun, Yu Ailei, Ni Jingyang

Panorama

A loyal Irish Catholic priest spends what he believes is the last week of his life pondering whether he has made any difference at all to his community in Calvary, a rich character drama that is equally eloquent and despairing.

Building on the promise of his feature debut, comedythriller The Guard, writer-director John Michael McDonagh travels into more philosophical terrain, ruminating on the limits of faith and basic human decency to bring meaning to our often empty and random existence. A fine lead performance from The Guard star Brendan Gleeson grounds Calvary in a weary resignation that feels lived-in and deeply considered.

As the film opens, Father James (Gleeson) is hearing confessions when an unseen parishioner tells him that he was molested by a priest, who is now dead, when he was a boy. As retribution, the parishioner says he will kill Father James in one week, an act he hopes will prove shocking to the community since Father James is respected for his good deeds and loving demeanour.

In another kind of movie, Father James would set about to determine the identity of the parishioner, but McDonagh is not so much concerned with that mystery as he is in watching Father James use this startling announcement as a prompt to explore his legacy as a priest.

Although chiefly a drama, Calvary retains from The Guard McDonagh’s skill with pithy dialogue. There are not so much comedic sequences in this film as there are comically flawed individuals, and one of the movie’s sadfunny running jokes is that these people do not really see themselves as lost souls.

Wherever James looks, his parishioners are selfabsorbed, self-righteous or just plain clueless. There is a gentle comedy to these scenes, but Calvary’s sombre tone intentionally undercuts the laughs: for James, there is nothing funny about his failure to elevate his fellow man.

Gleeson brings his usual gruffness to the role, but in Father James he has found a character whose tough exterior belies his warm, steady manner.

Ire-UK. 2013. 101mins Director/screenplay John Michael McDonagh Production companies Irish Film Board, BFI, LipSync Productions, Reprisal Films, Octagon Films International sales Protagonist Pictures, www.protagonistpictures. com Producers Chris Clark, Flora Fernandez-Marengo, James Flynn Executive producers Robert Walak, Ronan Flynn Cinematography Larry Smith Editor Chris Gill Production designer Mark Geraghty Music Patrick Cassidy Main cast Brendan Gleeson, Chris O’Dowd, Kelly Reilly, Aidan Gillen, Dylan Moran, Isaach De Bankolé, M Emmet Walsh, Marie-Josée Croze, Domhnall Gleeson

July 11-12, 2014 Screen International at Jerusalem 11 n

Screenings

» Screening times and venues are

correct at the time of going to press

Edited by Paul Lindsell paullindsell@gmail.com

in grief. It also shatters Richard, Kai’s partner, who feels responsible for the bereaved mother.

He arrives at the house where she is staying and attempts to comfort her, but the mother, a ChineseCambodian who barely speaks English, scarcely hides her dislike for Richard. To communicate with her, he hires a young translator. The mismatched pair attempts to carry on a dialogue and bridge cultural and linguistic gaps through memories of the man that was so dear to them both.

Friday July 11 09:30 How I Live Now

(UK) Lev Films, Tel Aviv.

101mins. Dir: Kevin Macdonald. Key cast: Saoirse Ronan, Tom Holland, George MacKay, Anna Chancellor, Corey Johnson.

Daisy is a young New Yorker who is sent from the big city to visit relatives in rural England. Armed with sunglasses and earphones, she of course feels like a fish out of water, but this turns out to be the least of her troubles. Soon enough (the film takes place in the not-so-distant future) World War Three breaks out. While white dust fills the sky and the army is evacuating the cities, Daisy will have to survive the catastrophe and to find comfort with people whom she hardly knows.

Gala Cinematheque1

Kiki’s Delivery Service See box, right

10:00 Sacro GRA

(Italy) Doc&Film, Paris.

93mins. Dir: Gianfranco Rosi.

After documenting life and death on the Ganges River, an assortment of characters in the California desert and a hired assassin working for the Mexican drug cartels, Gianfranco Rosi decided to return home, to Italy. Over the course of two years he drove up and down the GRA, the giant ring road that encircles Rome, and documented encounters with people from all walks of life who live or work near the highway.

From an impoverished aristocrat who rents out his family estate as a filming location, through exotic dancers, to a father and daughter who share an apartment, a botanist trying to save palm trees, an eel fisherman, and a paramedic who frequently drives the “holy” highway.

Int. Documentaries Cinematheque3

Panorama Lev Smadar

12:15

Friday July 11 10:00 Kiki’s Delivery Service

(Japan) Orlando Films, Tel Aviv. 103mins. Dir: Hayao Miyazaki. Key cast: Voices: Minami Takayama, Rei Sakuma, Kappei Yamaguchi, Keiko Toda.

Kiki, a young optimistic witch has just turned 13.

According to tradition, this is precisely the time to leave her home in the little village and seek out a new place where she can practise her skills as a witch.

Together with a talking

When Jews Were Funny

cat called Jiji, Kiki heads for the nearby city of Koriko on the coast. She opens a delivery service for a small bakery and becomes friendly with the locals, one of whom, a young man named Tombo, is enthusiastic about her flying talents.

Kiki will soon learn that independence involves responsibilities and hard work, and that only through these can she learn self-confidence and become a certified witch.

Odin’s Eye Entertainment, Brighton Le Sands.

84mins. Dir: Aaron Wilson.

Singapore, February 9, 1942. The height of the Second World War. A downed Australian fighter pilot wakes up to find himself dangling between heaven and earth, his parachute caught in the treetops. As night eats away at the daylight he must make his way through the thick jungle, trying to escape the Japanese forces and find shelter.

Tribute to Miyazaki

Debuts Competition

Cinematheque2

Cinematheque1

The Man of the Crowd True Friends

(France) Eden Cinema, Tel Aviv. 104mins. Dir: Stephan Archinard, Francois PrevotLeygonie. Key cast: Jean-Hughes Anglade, Gerard Lanvin, Wladimir Yordanoff.

Paul, Walter and Jacques are childhood friends in their 50s, each with very different personalities.

Paul is a writer lacking inspiration, Walter owns a renowned restaurant and Jacques, who is gay, is an intellectual bookseller in Paris. Walter, who is overly protective of Clemence (his 20-yearold daughter whom he raised alone following his divorce), believes that

n 12 Screen International at Jerusalem July 11-12, 2014

in friendship and love everything has to be in the open, and he does not tolerate lies. When Clemence falls in love with Paul, despite their 30-year age difference, they worry about Walter’s reaction. While many in their circle learn of the affair and come to accept it, they decide not to tell Walter right away, and so the lying begins.

Gala Lev Smadar

10:15 oscars shorts Cinematheque4

11:30 Canopy

(Australia, Singapore)

(Brazil) Figa Films, Los Angeles. 95mins. Dir: Cao Guimaraes, Marcelo Gomes. Key cast: Paulo Andre, Silvia Lourenco, Jean-Claude Bernardet.

Juvenal is a train driver in the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte. He lives in a modest apartment and his social life consists of wandering through the city as one of the crowd.

Gradually a relationship develops between him and a station controller named Margo. Margo’s social life is comprised primarily of her relationship with her computer and the people she meets through it, including her fiance. When Margo asks Juvenal to be a witness at her wedding,

he finds himself compelled to open up a little more.

Carte Blanche Cinematheque2

12:00 Aliza

(Israel) Heymann Brothers Films. 58mins.

Dir: Tomer Heymann.

In 1995, mythological actress Aliza Rosen met Tomer Heymann, a young film director, just as he was starting his career.

After close to 20 years of film-making and 15 documentary films, Tomer returns to the materials and edits them, creating an intimate portrait – filled with sadness and humour — of a woman whose diverse career on the stage, television and film did not prepare her for the most difficult role of all: exposing her private persona and life story to the camera.

The Van Leer Awards for Israeli Cinema — Documentary Film Cinematheque3

Lilting

(UK) Protagonist Pictures, London.

91mins. Dir: Hong Khaou. Key cast: Ben Whishaw, Pei-pei Cheng, Andrew Leung.

The sudden death of Kai, a young Londoner, comes as a blow to his mother, Joan, and immerses her

(Canada) Film Sales, New York. 89mins.

Dir: Alan Zweig.

We’re the same people.

We complain, we eat, and we’re funny. That’s what being Jewish is all about.

(Judy Gold). We all know Jewish jokes, but what is it about Jewish humour that makes it so unique?

Is it the mamalochen?

Is it the rhythm? The kvetching? The selfobsession? After all, as comedian Modi Rosenfeld reminds us, what goy is running around talking about being Christian?

Acclaimed documentary film-maker Alan Zweig sets out on a journey into the heart of Jewish humour, offering 80-plus minutes of interviews with some of the greatest Jewish comedians today.

The Jewish Experience Cinematheque4

13:30 Timbuktu

(France, Mauritania) Le Pacte, Paris. 100mins. Dir: Abderrahmane Sissako.

Key cast: Ibrahim Ahmed, Toulou Kiki, Abel Jafri, Fatoumata Diawara, Hichem Yacoubi.

The death of a cow in a bloody conflict between a shepherd and a fisherman encompasses the grim story of Mali, a West African country torn between religious factions,

Further JFF coverage, see screendaily.com

and particularly portrays Timbuktu, a former tourist destination that is today controlled by radical Jihadists. The cow, nicknamed GPS, serves as a metaphor for a country held hostage by armed religious bullies who rely upon the most advanced technology. Under the theocratic regime it is forbidden to listen to western music, wear immodest clothing, or even play football. This is the first film made in Mali since armed militias seized control in 2012.

wheelchair-bound mother.

Not finding her Prince Charming, she falls under the charms of the broodingly attractive Sterling, who plays games yet causes her to fall madly in love with him.

Davina is drawn into a whirlwind of romance and adventure, and proposes to Sterling that they go together on a road trip that will take them far from their small town.

As they head on their way everything goes fine, more or less, but the enchantment of her new relationship quickly fades when Sterling’s volatile side begins to emerge.

In the Spirit of Freedom in Memory of Wim van Leer Cinematheque1

Debuts Competition Cinematheque2

13:45 Himmo

(Israel) Ehud Bleiberg, Tel Aviv. 87mins. Dir: Amos Guttman. Key cast: Icho Avital, Yossi Graber, Shai Kapon.

It is 1948. Jerusalem is under siege. Hamutal, a beautiful young nurse whose boyfriend was killed in battle arrives at an abandoned monastery serving as a temporary hospital for wounded soldiers. She is sent to work in the bell tower, populated by cynical casualties. Himmo arrives, very severely wounded, despondent because of his condition and wishing for death. Himmo and Hamutal develop a perverse yet passionate relationship that tests the boundaries between attraction and rejection, mercy and pain, the strength of life and longing for death.

JFF Special Cinematheque2

14:00 Calvary

(UK, Ireland) Lev Films, Tel Aviv. 100mins. Dir: John Michael McDonagh.

Key cast: Brendan Gleeson, Chris O’Dowd, Kelly Reilly, Dylan Moran.

Father James, a goodhearted Irish country priest, receives a death threat through the grille of the confessional. The crucifixion is set for

Friday July 11 16:15 Swim Little Fish Swim

(US, France) Jour2Fete, Paris. 95mins. Dir: Ruben Amar, Lola Bessis. Key cast: Dustin Guy Deffa, Lola Bessis, Brooke Bloom.

Twenty-something Leeward is married, has a daughter and lives in New York. He is also Jewish and has a set of overbearing parents… at least his grandmother is kind and understanding.

He wants to make music but is unemployed and

the following Sunday.

With a week to get his affairs in order, the priest reexamines different parts of his life and his relationship with his flock. He confronts questions of faith and sin, pondering his mission, the value of sacrifice, and forgiveness vs. revenge.

His preparation for death is further complicated by the visit of his daughter following a suicide attempt. As the week progresses, the forces of darkness seem to close in on the things the priest holds dearest.

Panorama Lev Smadar

The Great Museum

(Austria) Wide House,

Miss Violence

his wife, who works as a hospital nurse, is pushing him to finally do something productive with his life. Into the problematic relationship steps Lilas, a beautiful French artist who needs a place to stay. Lilas, who grew up overshadowed by a successful artist for a mother, has doubts about her own life and understands Leeward’s desire to realise himself and the artist within.

Gala Lev Smadar

Paris. 94mins. Dir: Johannes Holzhausen.

A unique behind-thescenes look at Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, which holds one of the largest art collections in the world, alongside no less impressive antiques and coins collections. The film’s director, Johannes Holzhausen, documented the museum over the course of more than a year, observing the workers in the various branches of the museum — from the cleaners to the management — in their daily work of renovation, restoration, marketing, auctions, a presidential visit, and exhibition openings.

Carte Blanche Cinematheque4

(Greece) Elle Driver, Paris. 98mins. Dir: Alexandros Avranas.

Key cast: Themis Panou, Eleni Roussinou, Reni Pittaki, Chloe Bolota, Sissy Toumasi, Kalliopi Zontanou, Konstantinos Athanasiades.

Members of a nuclear family dance to Leonard Cohen’s “Dance Me To The End Of Love”, celebrating the 11th birthday of the beautiful Angeliki. On the surface everything looks more or less normal, but underneath this celebration rumbles a disturbing, artificial atmosphere. When Angeliki climbs up onto the window sill and jumps to her death, it begins to become clear that something awful is happening in this family. Even stranger yet is that after the suicide, the family members go on with their day as if nothing happened.

Outside, the authorities begin to wonder what’s going on within the walls of this house.

In the Spirit of Freedom in Memory of Wim van Leer Cinematheque3

15:45 Wakolda

(France, Argentina, Spain, Norway) Nachshon Films, Ramat

Gan. 93mins. Dir: Lucia Puenzo. Key cast: Natalia Oreiro, Alex Brandemuhl, Diego Peretti, Florencia Bado, Elena Roger.

Patagonia, 1960. A German doctor meets an Argentine family and follows them on a desert road to Bariloche, where he becomes the first guest at their refurbished lakeside inn. The family accepts the doctor as one of their own, taking an interest in his medical advice, cultured ways and money. In the meantime, the doctor becomes fascinated by Lilith, the family’s daughter, who is undersized for her age and in need of mentorship.

What begins as a seemingly innocent friendship becomes a sinister obsession with scientific purity and perfection. Unbeknown to the family, they are living with one of the greatest Nazi war criminals of all times.

The Jewish Experience Cinematheque1

16:00 I Believe in Unicorns

(US) ICM Partners, Los Angeles. 80mins. Dir: Leah Meyerhoff. Key cast: Natalia Dyer, Peter Vack, Julia Garner.

Beautiful, fantasyprone teenager Davina spends most of her free time taking care of her

The Distance

(Spain) AM Films, Barcelona. 80mins. Dir: Sergio Caballero. Key cast: Michal Lagosz, Alberto Martinez, Jinson Anazco.

The owner of a Siberian power station with a fetish for alien research, “purchases” an Austrian performance artist and locks him up in an abandoned barn next to the station. Even after the death of the oligarch, the artist remains imprisoned.

After years of captivity, he hires three short-statured criminals and gives them a week to steal “The Distance” — a mysterious object that is well-guarded inside the station by an odd security guard. While he awaits the results of the burglary, the artist scribbles a complex mathematical equation on the wall.

Carte Blanche Cinematheque4

16:15 Swim Little Fish Swim See box, above 16:30 Life of Poetry — The Story of Avraham Halfi

(Israel) Kastina Communications.

53mins. Dir: Uri Misgav.

A journey through the life and work of Abraham Halfi, the unsung hero of Hebrew culture whose »

July 11-12, 2014 Screen International at Jerusalem 13 n

SCREENINGS

greatest yearning was to shrink “into an unknown point,” as remarked in one of his poems. He was revealed to the public only in his final years, by the popular singer Arik Einstein, who recorded Halfi’s poem “Atur Mitzchech” (Your Forehead is Decorated) — the most beloved Israeli song of all times. The film tells the story of this song and the man who created it.

The Van Leer Awards for Israeli Cinema — Documentary Film Cinematheque3

17:45 Beyond Clueless

(UK) The Film Sales Company, New York.

91mins. Dir: Charlie Lyne.

Back in the mid-1990s a new era of teen movies was born. It was a time when Cher Horowitz was the ultimate fashion icon, Freddie Prinze, Jr was the ultimate dreamboat, and cafeteria seating orders were mapped out carefully by clique. In the decade that followed, the phenomenon consolidated into a bona fide genre. Young film critic Charlie Lyne decided that the time has come to give proper due to the hitherto ignored post-John Hughesian teen-movie phenomenon. He compiled and edited excerpts from more than 200 films, made brilliant observations on each of them and on the genre as a whole, invited actress Fairuza Balk to narrate, and indie-pop band Summer Camp to compose the soundtrack.

The result is a wild and refreshing odyssey into the head, body, and soul of a decade of teen movies, revealing new sides of one of the most fascinating genres in contemporary mainstream American cinema.

Cinemania Cinematheque4

Friday July 11 18:30 The Amazing Catfish

(France, Mexico) Pyramide, Paris.

89mins. Dir: Claudia Sainte-Luce. Key cast: Ximena Ayala, Lisa Owen, Sonia Franco.

Twenty-two-year-old Claudia lives alone and works as a product demonstrator at a supermarket. One day, after feeling sharp stomach pains, she winds up in the hospital with an acute case of appendicitis. She wakes up after her operation to meet her roommate

down on the floor during a martial-arts practice session. From the onset of the film, it is clear that one character is much stronger than the other: Arnaud is a quiet guy, pleasant, and refined; Madeleine is an active sportswoman and a fighter. She’s also beautiful.

When she registers for a military training camp, he joins her, almost by chance — and the love story develops from there.

Panorama Cinematheque1

Love at First Fight

(France) BAC Films, Paris. Dir: Thomas Cailley. Key cast: Adele Haenel, Kevin Azais, Antoine Laurent, Brigitte Rouan, William Lebghil.

Arnaud falls in love with Madeleine, and it happens after she knocks him

18:00 Black Coal, Thin Ice

(Hong Kong, China) Fortissimo, Amsterdam.

Dir: Diao Yinan. Key cast: Liao Fan, Gwei Lun Mei, Ni Jingyang, Wang Xuebing, Wang Jingchun, Yu Ailei.

n 14 Screen International at Jerusalem July 11-12, 2014

Martha, a warmhearted single mother of four.

The two women are released from the hospital at the same time and the fast friendship brings Claudia for a visit at Martha’s house, where Claudia discovers family life for the first time. While Martha’s health continues to decline, Claudia’s bond with the members of the household grows stronger and she becomes an integral part of the small and colorful tribe.

Debuts Competition Lev Smadar

A small town in northern China, 1999. A coal miner is brutally murdered and his body parts are discovered hundreds of kilometers apart throughout the region.

The police investigation reveals a potential suspect, but the attempt to capture him takes a heavy toll: two police officers dead and one badly injured.

Zhang Zili, the injured officer, is suspended from duty and has to take a job as a security guard at a factory. Five years later, when a series of mysterious murders once again plagues the region, Zhang decides to investigate the murders on his own. After discovering that all of the victims were connected to a beautiful young woman who works at a small dry

cleaner, he decides to pose as a client in order to follow her.

Panorama Cinematheque2

Difret

(US, Ethiopia) Films Boutique, Berlin. 99mins.

Dir: Zeresenay Berhane Mehari. Key cast: Meron Getnet, Tizita Hagere, Rahel Teshome.

Fourteen-year-old Hirut is abducted for marriage on the way home from school in a small village in the heart of Ethiopia.

After she is raped, she manages to flee, shooting her captor in self-defence and killing him. All of the people in the area demand that she be executed and police representatives in the region make halfhearted efforts to grant her fair treatment until the awaited verdict.

Enter Meaza, a lawyer who established an organisation that provides legal assistance to women, and fights with all her might for the rights and liberty of Hirot.

sold for tens of millions of dollars or more, it is clear that the art world is also — if not primarily — a market. The film takes us on a journey between the established art centres of Venice, Paris, Basel and New York, to no less important centres in the 21st-century global art economy, such as Dubai, Hong Kong and Beijing.

Carte Blanche Cinematheque4

20:00 Catch Me Daddy

(UK) Altitude, London.

107mins. Dir: Daniel Wolfe. Key cast: Sameena Jabeen Ahmed, Conor McCarron.

Laila, a teenager with pink hair, has brought shame upon her Pakistani family. She flees her home and lives with her Scottish boyfriend in a trailer on the edge of a town in West Yorkshire. Her father will not forgive her and sends a group of thugs to punish the rebellious girl and her boyfriend.

Panorama

In the Spirit of Freedom in Memory of Wim van Leer

Cinematheque2

Cinematheque3

Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem

18:30 The Amazing Catfish See box, above

19:30 The Art Rush

(France) The Festival Agency, Paris. 86mins.

Dir: Marianne Lamour.

When works of art are

(Israel) Deux Beaux Garcons Films, Tel Aviv. 113mins. Dir: Ronit Elkabetz, Shlomi Elkabetz. Key cast: Ronit Elkabetz, Simon Abkarian, Menashe Noy, Sasson Gabay, Eli Gornstein, Rami Danon, Roberto Pollak, Albert

Illuz, Evelin Hagoel, Ruby Porat Shoval, Ze’ev Revach, Dalia Begger, Avraham Selektar, Shmil Ben Ari, Gabi Amrani.

Israeli law does not allow a woman to divorce her husband without the latter’s consent. Marriage in Israel is governed by religious, not civil law.

Viviane Amsalem wants a divorce. But for years, her husband, Elisha, has refused to appear in Rabbinical Court. Once he finally appears, he refuses to grant her the longawaited divorce. Without his consent, Viviane is trapped in wedlock. The Rabbinical Court and its three presiding judges need sufficient grounds to force him to comply with her wishes. And even if “good cause” is found, they cannot grant her a “gett” — a divorce — in his place.

The Haggiag Awards for Israeli Cinema — Full Length Films Cinematheque1

20:15 Night Moves

(US) Match Factory, Cologne. 112mins. Dir: Kelly Reichardt. Key cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Dakota Fanning, Peter Sarsgaard.

Three environmentalists decide to pull off the biggest protest of their life: blowing up a hydraulic dam, which symbolises for them industrial culture and its devouring of resources and killing off of every source of natural energy. Harmon is a former marine, a hopeless adrenaline-seeker; Dena is a high-society drop-out; and Josh is a middle class guy who works on an organic farm. A thriller that poses questions about the implications of political extremism and asks, among other things, when the situation around us requires breaking the law.

Gala Cinematheque3

20:30 Jimmy P

(US, France) United King, Ramat Hasharon.

117mins. Dir: Arnaud Desplechin. Key cast: Benicio Del Toro, Mathieu Amalric, Gina McKee.

Jimmy Picard, an American Indian who fought in the Second World War, suffers from debilitating headaches, loss of hearing, and peculiar dreams. The military hospital classifies him as schizophrenic, but his situation is extremely confusing. Enter French psychoanalyst Georges Devereux, who is researching Native American culture, and is called upon by hospital staff in an effort to solve the riddle of the mysterious patient. The two develop a warm and unusual relationship, examining Jimmy’s memories and dreams like a pair of detectives.

Masters Lev Smadar

21:30 Yozgat Blues

(Germany, Turkey) Hokus Fokus, Istanbul.

93mins. Dir: Mahmut Fazil Coskun. Key cast: Ercan Kesal, Tansu Bicer, Ayca Damgacı.

Long-time night-club singer Yavuz’s repertoire consists mostly of songs from the 1970s. With his career in serious decline, nowadays he mostly preforms at shopping centres and gives free music lessons. Frustrated by his current gigs, he looks for work in other places and hears about a club in the city of Yozgat that is looking for singers.

To be precise, they’re looking for a male-female duo. He proposes to one of his students to join him, and the two make their way to the small city. But in Yozgat, not everything goes according to plan.

Panorama Cinematheque4

22:15 Moebius

a public memorial to the awful history of the place, or any trace of it in the guide books, and returns there in the dead of winter, this time with a camera.

In the Spirit of Freedom in Memory of Wim van Leer Cinematheque1

10:00 I’m not Him

Friday July 11 22:15 Moebius

(South Korea) Finecut, Seoul. 89mins. Dir: Kim Ki-Duk. Key cast: Cho Jae-hyun, Seo Young-ju, Lee Eun-woo.

A betrayed woman threatens her husband with revenge while their teenage son is busy with web pornography and comics. When she fails in her attempt to stab her husband, she takes out her vengeance on the son, cuts off his penis with a comedienne. On stage, she projects total sincerity, captivating her audience by sharing the most intimate details of her life. Over a period of a few days she manages to get dumped by her boyfriend, loses her job, and gets knocked up from a casual encounter. She decides to have an abortion and on the way perhaps become better acquainted with the guy who got her pregnant.

Gala Cinematheque1

See box, above

22:30 Obvious Child

(US) The Exchange, Los Angeles. 83mins. Dir: Gillian Robespierre. Key cast: Jenny Slate, Jake Lacy, Gaby Hoffmann, Gabe Liedman, Richard Kind, Polly Draper.

Donna Stern is a young, sharp-tongued

The Raid 2

(US, Indonesia) Sony Pictures, Los Angeles.

150mins. Dir: Gareth Evans. Key cast: Iko Uwais, Yayan Ruhian, Arifin Putra.

Gareth Evans returns to Indonesia with his hero, Officer Rama. This time, Rama goes to jail as an undercover agent to expose

knife, and escapes into the night. From here, the macabre plot moves into even wilder territory such that even sworn fans of South Korean master Kim Ki-Duc will find it difficult to remain indifferent: purchase of human organs via internet, gang rape, extreme forms of sexual gratification, and other examples of sadism and misogyny.

Masters Cinematheque2

a brutal crime gang.

Naturally, the mission proves more difficult than expected and the hardened criminals are even tougher and more vicious than those in the first film, leading Rama on an odyssey of violence like no other.

Cinematheque3 Lev Smadar

Saturday July 12 09:30 My Neighbor Totoro

(Japan) Orlando Films, Tel Aviv. 86mins. Dir: Hayao Miyazaki. Key cast: Voices: Noriko Hidaka, Chika Sakamoto, Toshiyuki Amagasa, Shigeru Chiba.

“My Neighbor Totoro” marks the transition in Miyazaki’s film plots to Japanese surroundings, but here too, both the plot and forms reflect the influence of European

children’s literature. The film is Miyazaki’s most successful work and brought the Japanese anima to the entire world.

Totoro also became an icon and part of the Studio Ghibli logo. Even though this is one of the most personal works in Miyazaki’s filmography (biographical parallels are clearly evident), children and adults around the world identify with the captivating nostalgia for youth, the naivete of first discovery, and the connection to nature.

Tribute to Miyazaki Cinematheque4

Paris, Texas

(US, France, UK, West Germany) Hollywood Classics, London.

147mins. Dir: Wim Wenders. Key cast: Harry Dean Stanton, Hunter Carson, Dean Stockwell.

An amnesiac man wanders out of the Texas desert into a godforsaken town and collapses.

The mystery behind his disappearance four years earlier will not dissipate — not after his brother comes to pick him up, not when he returns to Los Angeles to reunite with his young son, and not even when goes to track down his wife and try to understand how his marriage fell apart.

“Paris, Texas”, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes exactly 30 years ago, is apparently the best known and

most successful of Wim Wenders’ films. Here the German director explores the myth of America as it was fashioned by the cinema, infusing his private style with elements of the western, the family melodrama, and the road movie.

Classics Cinematheque2

09:45 For Those Who Can Tell No Tales

(Bosnia and Herzegovina) MPM, Paris. 75mins. Dir: Jasmila Zbanic. Key cast: Kym Vercoe, Boris Isakovic, Simon McBurney.

Summer 2011. Australian performance artist Kim Vercoe decides to go on holiday on her own to Bosnia. After reading Nobel Prize laureate Ivo Andric’s novel, “Bridge Over The Drina”, she decides to go visit the town where that bridge is located — Visegrad.

She stays in a hotel recommended by one of her guide books, but during her stay in the hotel something feels not right. After returning to Australia, an internet search reveals that the town of Visegrad was the site of horrific war crimes during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, and the hotel where she stayed was the site of a massive rape of dozens of women. She is shocked by the absence of

(France, Germany, Turkey, Greece) Pascale Ramonda, Paris. 124mins.

Dir: Tayfun Pirselimoglu.

Key cast: Ercan Kesal, Maryam Zaree.

You are who you are, until you’re someone else. But this doesn’t come without a price. Lonely middle-aged Nihat is a sworn bachelor who works in a hospital kitchen. When his beautiful co-worker Ayse invites him to dinner at her place, he acquiesces, despite rumours that she is married and that her husband is serving time for serious crimes.

During the visit he notices the couple’s wedding picture and remarks the striking physical resemblance between himself and the jailed husband. So begins an odd but dizzying relationship, and Nihat’s life changes beyond recognition.

Panorama Cinematheque3

11:15 Jealousy

(France) Lev Films, Tel Aviv. 77mins. Dir: Philippe Garrel. Key cast: Louis Garrel, Anna Mouglalis, Rebecca Convenant.

In 1965, when he was only 17 years old, Philippe Garrel made a short film in which he cast his father, well-known stage actor Maurice Garrel, in the role of a father spending a weekend with his mistress when his son pays a visit. Shortly after the death of his father, Garrel decided to make an updated version of the autobiographical short.

Masters Lev Smadar

O Samba

(Germany, Switzerland) 82mins. Dir: Georges Gachot.

If you didn’t overdose on football or samba

July 11-12, 2014 Screen International at Jerusalem 15 n

»

SCREENINGS

during the month of the Mundial in Brazil, you will may be interested in the people behind the famous Brazilian rhythm — above all, 78-year-old composer and vocalist Martinho da Vila. Director Georges Gachot and his crew accompany the beloved musician on his journey from the Vila Isabel Samba School in Rio de Janeiro to his birthplace and to Paris, where da Vila recorded his big hit “Canta, Canta Mi Gente” with Greek vocalist Nana Mouskouri.

Da Vila, patron of samba philosophy, incorporates desire and suffering, sadness and joy in his works; samba is a way of life, poetry, text, language — far more than quivering hips and dressing up for Carnival.

Carte Blanche Cinematheque4

11:30 Short Term 12

(US) Lev Films, Tel Aviv.

96mins. Dir: Destin Daniel Cretton. Key cast: Brie Larson, John Gallagher Jr, Kaitlyn Dever.

Twenty-something Grace is a supervisor at a group home for troubled teenagers.

Her job isn’t to serve as a substitute mother, teacher, or psychologist for the young men and women living there, but in reality she and the rest of the staff — which includes her boyfriend Mason — somehow fulfill all these roles. During the course of one week, a number of events lead her to reexamine her life and make far-reaching decisions about her future.

Panorama Cinematheque1

12:15 Salvation Army

(France, Switzerland, Morocco) Pascale Ramonda, Paris. 81mins.

Dir: Abdellah Taia. Key cast: Said Mrini, Karim Ait M’hand, Amine Ennaji.

Author Abdellah Taia adapts his autobiographical book “Salvation Army” to the big screen and presents it as a two-part cinematic work. The first

Saturday July 12 13:30 Bad Hair

(Germany, Argentina, Peru, Venezuela) Figa Films, Los Angeles.

93mins. Dir: Mariana Rondon.

Junior dreams of having straight hair.

Just eight years old, he is determined to tame his stubborn curls for his class picture. Junior lives in a gargantuan Caracas housing project along with his mother Marta, a young widow who recently lost her job as a security guard, and his baby brother.

Marta is distressed

part covers his youth in Morocco as he develops a sexual awareness and begins to examine social codes, patriarchal brutality and the dire poverty of his childhood surroundings.

The second part shows an older Abdellah, now an impoverished student in Geneva, where he is forced to deal with the sexual, racial, political and social aspects of his being a Moroccan homosexual in Europe.

Panorama Cinematheque2

12:30 Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem

(Israel) Deux Beaux Garcons Films, Tel Aviv. 113mins. Dir: Ronit Elkabetz, Shlomi

n 16 Screen International at Jerusalem July 11-12, 2014

by her son’s obsession with his appearance, fearing early signs of homosexuality. The more the captivating boy tries to win his mother’s love and acceptance, the more she pushes him away. Junior’s black paternal grandmother, a charming and vibrant woman, understands his situation and offers to take the child under her care; but Marta refuses and decides she’ll do everything in her power to put her son “back on track”.

Panorama Cinematheque1

Elkabetz. Key cast: Ronit Elkabetz, Simon Abkarian, Menashe Noy, Sasson Gabay, Eli Gornstein, Rami Danon, Roberto Pollak, Albert Illuz, Evelin Hagoel, Ruby Porat Shoval, Ze’ev Revach, Dalia Begger, Avraham Selektar, Shmil Ben Ari, Gabi Amrani.

Israeli law does not allow a woman to divorce her husband without the latter’s consent. Marriage in Israel is governed by religious, not civil law.

Viviane Amsalem wants a divorce. But for years, her husband, Elisha, has refused to appear in Rabbinical Court. Once he finally appears, he refuses to grant her the longawaited divorce. Without his consent, Viviane is

trapped in wedlock. The Rabbinical Court and its three presiding judges need sufficient grounds to force him to comply with her wishes. And even if “good cause” is found, they cannot grant her a “gett” — a divorce — in his place.

The decision-making power is his and his alone, and Viviane has no choice but to wait, for years, until he agrees to set her free.

Cinematheque3

13:00 24 Days

(France) Alexandre Films, Paris. 110mins.

Dir: Alexandre Arcady.

Key cast: Zabou Breitman, Pascal Elbe, Jacques Gamblin.

January 20, 2006. After dinner with his family, Ilan Halimi called an attractive girl he had met at work and made plans to meet her for coffee. Ilan did not suspect a thing; he was 23 and had his whole life ahead of him. The next time Ilan’s family heard from him, it was through a cryptic online message from kidnappers demanding a ransom in exchange for their son’s life.

The Jewish Experience Lev Smadar

13:15 Watchers of the Sky

(US, Netherlands, Chad, Rwanda) Propeller Films, New York. 122mins. Dir: Edet Belzberg.

In the 1920s, Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish

lawyer, tried to convince the international legal system to create a legal classification for the horrific crimes in Armenia.

After escaping Nazi Germany and coming to the United States, Lemkin coined the term “genocide” and dedicated his life to building a system of international law that would prevent such acts from happening again.

The film follows Lemkin’s story and goes on to focus on four protagonists who carry on his work to this day. These people are fighting to bring to justice those who are responsible for the crimes committed in Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Darfur, and Syria, while the international political system doesn’t do much more than official reprimands.

In the Spirit of Freedom in Memory of Wim van Leer Cinematheque4

13:30 Bad Hair See box, above

14:00 Marin Karmitz — A Life at the Movies

(France) MK2, Paris.

52mins. Dir: Felix Von Boehm. Key cast: Marin Karmitz, Juliette Binoche, Michael Haneke.

A journey through 50 years of European cinematic history through the intimate portrait of Marin Karmitz, founder and president of MK2.

The film follows Karmitz’s life story — from his arrival in France as a child, to his first steps in the film industry as assistant to Agnes Varda, Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Rozier among others, up until his becoming a highly influential figure in the cultural world. Marin Karmitz has produced more than 100 films and distributed about 350 titles, including works by the Taviani brothers, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Alain Resnais, Ken Loach, Claire Denis, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Michael Haneke, Abbas Kiarostami, Hong SangSoo, Gus Van Sant, Wim Wenders, Fatih Akin, Mike Leigh, Steve McQueen, Xavier Dolan, to name a few. He has also successfully developed an independent network of 10 cinemas in Paris, attracting an average of five million viewers per year, and bringing arthouse cinema to the city’s diverse neighbourhoods.

JFF Special Cinematheque2

15:00 36 Views of Fukushima

(Israel, Japan) Ophir Leibovitch. 85mins. Dir: Michal Kaphra, Deva Oz Melman.

Three journeys to Japan after the Fukushima disaster.

The Van Leer Awards for Israeli Cinema — Documentary Film Cinematheque3

15:30 If You Don’t, I Will

(France) Les Films du Losange, Paris. 102mins.

Dir: Sophie Fillieres.

Key cast: Emmanuelle Devos, Mathieu Amalric, Josephine de La Baume.

Pomme and Pierre have been together for a long time. But is it still love, or has their relationship turned into a kind of facade, a performance that they go through every day? He insults her, she belittles him. It’s not so much that they can no longer stand one another, just that they’ve had their fill of being a couple — this specific couple. On

the other hand, it’s not so simple to break up. They cling to their routine and carry on a comic dynamic full of squabbling and bickering, but this slowly erodes. During one of their weekly hikes in the forest, Pomme refuses to return home with Pierre.

Gala Lev Smadar

Stoker

(US, UK) Hollywood Classics, London. 99mins.

Dir: Park Chan-wook. Key cast: Nicole Kidman, Mia Wasikowska, Matthew Goode.

After the death of her father, India Stoker is surprised by the arrival of her handsome uncle Charles, about whose existence she knew nothing. The uncle moves in with India and her mother, prompting a mix of attraction and suspicion about the mysterious man’s motives that will define this poetic and disturbing coming-of-age tale.

JFF Special Cinematheque1

15:45 The Man of the Crowd

(Brazil) Figa Films, Los Angeles. 95mins. Dir: Cao Guimaraes, Marcelo Gomes. Key cast: Paulo Andre, Silvia Lourenco, Jean-Claude Bernardet.

Juvenal is a train driver in the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte. He lives in a modest apartment and his social life consists of wandering through the city as one of the crowd.

Gradually a relationship develops between him and a station controller named Margo. Margo’s social life is comprised primarily of her relationship with her computer and the people she meets through it, including her fiance.

When Margo asks Juvenal to be a witness at her wedding, he finds himself compelled to open up a little more.

Carte Blanche Cinematheque4

16:30 For Those in Peril See box, above

17:00 The Voice of Peace

(Germany) Ruth Diskin

Saturday July 12 16:30 For Those in Peril

(UK) Protagonist Pictures, London.

92mins. Dir: Paul Wright. Key cast: George Mackay, Kate Dickie, Nichola Burley.

Aaron, a young man in a remote fishing community in Scotland, is the sole survivor of a mysterious maritime accident that took the lives of five young people, Films, Jerusalem.

89mins. Dir: Eric Friedler.

More than just an offshore pirate radio station, the Voice of Peace was the brainchild of a unique man. Pacifist and former fighter pilot Abie Natan brought a singular vision to a region in turmoil. From 1973 until 1993, “From somewhere in the Mediterranean”, this radio station, situated on a ship off the coast of Israel, broadcast messages of peace and hope. With the support of international stars such as John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Gloria Gaynor and Zubin Mehta, the “little radio station that could” played an important role not only in introducing new music into the region — but to opening the door to the idea of possibilities.

JFF Special Cinematheque3

including his older brother. The members of the community, imbued with local folklore, myths and superstitions, believe he is responsible for the horrible tragedy, and turn him into an outcast.

Aaron himself refuses to accept his brother’s death, and tries relentlessly to locate his traces and those of the other victims.

Debuts Competition Cinematheque2

17:45 Jack

(Germany) Beta Cinema, Munich. 103mins. Dir: Edward Berger. Key cast: Ivo Pietzker, Georg Arms, Luisse Heyer.

Jack is only 10 years old, but he is willing to deal with the challenges life has served him. His mother is an immature party girl, his father left them long ago, and Jack diligently plays the role of parent for his younger brother as he does his best to keep the family together. When mom disappears from the house for an extended period, Jack heads off with his brother to look for her. The city of Berlin — with its assorted types, side streets, parks and night clubs — is viewed from the point of view of the child embarking on an uncompromising coming-of-age journey.

Panorama Lev Smadar

18:00 Club Sandwich

(Mexico) Funny Balloons, Paris. 82mins. Dir: Fernando Eimbcke.

Key cast: Maria Renee Prudencio, Lucio Gimenez Cacho, Danae Reynaud Romero.

Paloma and Hector have a very special relationship.

She’s 35 and he’s 15. She’s his mother and he is her son, but by looking at them you’d think they were best friends. On vacation at a seaside hotel, Hector meets a girl and for the first time begins to discover the world of romantic love and sexuality. Paloma tries to hold onto Hector, but must come to terms with the cracks that begin to appear in her close relationship with her son.

Panorama Cinematheque1

The New Rijksmuseum

(Netherlands) Autlook Filmsales, Vienna.

216mins. Dir: Oeke Hoogendijk.

If you visited Amsterdam, chances are you visited the Rijksmuseum — one of the world’s largest and most important art temples.

Its collection includes masterpieces by Vermeer and Rembrandt. This enormous and elaborate building underwent a lengthy and intense renovation over a period of 10 years and reopened in April 2013. Dutch documentary film-maker

Oeke Hoogendijk closely followed this complex and grandiose project for nearly a decade.

Carte Blanche Cinematheque4

18:30

A documentary about Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, who in pursuit of the American Dream turned the Hollywood power structure upside down, producing more than 300 films and becoming the most powerful independent film company in the world. Up close and personal, the film examines the complex relationship between two contradictory personalities whose combined force both fuelled their success and eventual collapse. Golan and Globus were equally maligned by the critics, churning out B-movies by the dozens, but their canonical cultural impact and legacy is undeniable, wielding a kind of pop-cultural power that continues to seep into modern life.

The Van Leer Awards for Israeli Cinema — Documentary Film Cinematheque3

20:00

Refugee

Red Leaves

(France, Argentina) Memento Films, Paris.

90mins. Dir: Diego Lerman. Key cast: Julieta Diaz, Sebastian Ezequiel Molinaro.

Nobody came to pick up seven-year-old Matias from his friend’s birthday party.

When one of the mothers volunteers to take him home, they find his mother unconscious and severely beaten on the floor. The man behind this brutality is Matias’ father. This time, the mother decides to act: she takes the child and flees, via shelters for battered women and a series of secret apartments. It isn’t easy, particularly for the little boy, and the film manages to capture the complexity of the love between mother and son, the day-to-day problems they encounter, and the constant tension of living in fear of the father, who only appears in the film as a voice, but who casts a dark shadow over mother and son.

(Israel) Daroma Productions, Moshav Kokhav Michael. 80mins.

Dir: Bazi Gete. Key cast: Hanna Haiela, Meir Desse, Solomon Mersha.

Meseganio Tadela, 74, is a hard, obstinate, and nervous man. He emigrated to Israel from Ethiopia 28 years ago with his family. He has chosen to zealously retain his culture, talks very little and hardly speaks Hebrew.

After losing his wife, he is afraid of dying and being alone. Meseganio sets out on a journey that leads him through his children’s homes. He comes to realise that he belongs to a rapidly disappearing class that believes in retaining Ethiopian culture. The harsh reality hits him in the face. Having come to know some of life’s new realities, he tries to survive according to his own ways.

Panorama Cinematheque2

Cinematheque1

19:00

The Haggiag Awards for Israeli Cinema — Full Length Films 20:15 Jersey Boys

The Go-Go Boys

(Israel) Noah Films, Jerusalem. 85mins. Dir: Hilla Madalia.

(US) Globus Group, Neve Ilan. 134mins. Dir: Clint Eastwood. Key cast: John Lloyd Young, »

July 11-12, 2014 Screen International at Jerusalem 17 n

SCREENINGS

Erich Bergen, Michael Lomenda.

The story of an American band, The Four Seasons, whose songs made the US (and Israeli) hit parades in the 1960s and 1970s.

Masters Lev Smadar

To Kill a Man

(France, Chile) Film Factory, Barcelona.

82mins. Dir: Alejandro Fernandez Almendras.

Key cast: Daniel Candia, Daniel Antivilo, Alejandra Yanez.

Jorge is a devoted family man. He lives in a Chilean suburb and is forced to accept the terror and intimidation of the neighbourhood crime boss and his gang. But things become more complicated after Jorge’s son attempts to confront the bully and takes a bullet to his leg. And that is just the beginning. A barrage of threats and abuse bring Jorge to situations he never dreamed possible.

When the authorities are unable to help him and his family faces daily threats, it appears that Jorge has but one alternative.

Debuts Competition Cinematheque2

20:45 Tom at the Farm

(France, Canada) MK2, Paris. 102mins. Dir: Xavier Dolan. Key cast: Xavier Dolan, Pierre-Yves Cardinal, Lise Roy. After the death of his partner, Tom arrives at the family farm of his late friend and is shocked to discover that nobody knew about his sexual orientation. As time passes, Tom feels that a dark secret looms over this family of farmers, a secret that the dead boyfriend apparently attempted to escape.

Panorama Cinematheque3

21:00 And So It Goes

(US) United King, Ramat Hasharon. 93mins. Dir: Rob Reiner. Key cast: Michael Douglas, Diane Keaton, Yaya DaCosta.

Real estate agent Oren Little is one rude, self-

Saturday July 12 22:15 Forbidden Films

(Germany) Blueprint Film. 94mins. Dir: Felix Moeller.

The Third Reich produced more than 1,200 feature films.

Today, more than 70 years after the Nazi regime, 40 of these films remain banned from public screening. Out of fear for their anti-Semitic and incendiary content,

centred, money-hungry guy. His plan is very clear: to make one more hit on the real estate market, and then to retire and spend the rest of his life alone. But a plan isn’t a plan unless it gets foiled, and this is what happens when Little’s estranged son is arrested and comes to drop off his nine-year-old daughter, whom grandpa didn’t even know existed. Oren tries to pawn the kid off on his quirky neighbour, but discovers soon enough that he can’t live without his granddaughter — or without the new woman in his life.

Gala Cinema City 11

22:00 ’71

(UK) Protagonist Pictures,

n 18 Screen International at Jerusalem July 11-12, 2014

none of these films may be released on DVD or broadcast on television — they remain under lock and key, and can only be shown behind closed doors at scholarly events. Film-maker and researcher Felix Moeller continues to examine the ideology behind the notorious banned films of the Nazi era.

The Jewish Experience Cinematheque4

London. 100mins. Dir: Yann Demange. Key cast: Jack O’Connell, Paul Anderson, Richard Dormer.

Northern Ireland, 1971.

Domestic conflict in the country escalates into full-blown civil war.

Gary, a young English soldier, arrives in Belfast with his unit. The city is divided into areas of “loyal” Protestants and “hostile” Catholics, a confusing and challenging situation even for the most experienced soldiers.

When the English soldiers get in a skirmish and one of their weapons is stolen, Gary sets out in pursuit of the robber. But suddenly he finds himself on his own, deep in enemy territory. Now he has to try to get back to his base,

and it’s not going to be simple at all.

Gala Cinematheque1

22:15 Forbidden Films See box, above

Natural Sciences

(France, Argentina) Urban Distribution International, Paris.

71mins. Dir: Matias Lucchesi. Key cast: Paula Hertzog, Paola Barrientos, Alvin Astorga.

We first meet 12-year-old Lila as she scrapes a piece of rusty metal from an old electrical pole and rides a horse towards the remote boarding school where she lives. After that we see repeated attempts by the girl to run away from the boarding school to try and find out the identity of her father, with the piece of metal as her only clue.

Lila’s mother shows little interest in the girl, but a kind teacher agrees to go with her on a journey in search of the father, a journey that turns out to be longer than expected.

Panorama Cinematheque2

22:45 Suicide

(Israel) Zefania Productions. 129mins.

Dir: Benny Ferdman.

Key cast: Mali Levi, Rotem Keinan.

An action thriller that depicts the final hours of Oded Tsur before he must end his life. Oded was in financial trouble with his failing business and was forced to take out a loan from a ruthless loan shark, Muki Zaken. Muki forced Oded to purchase a life insurance policy and commit suicide by 9pm that day in order to repay his debt. Failing to do so by exactly that time would result in Muki killing his wife and kids as well.

Romi Dor, a sharp police detective tries to pick up all the pieces of the investigation, holding Daphne, Oded’s wife, who is found beside her husband’s burned body.

The police investigation reveals that Daphne is a manipulative ruthless adulteress, who used her husband’s situation to murder him. This action packed thriller leads us on a wild goose chase around a “unholy” dark Jerusalem, during a 24-hour period, where all hell breaks loose.

Israeli Cinema Cinema City 11

23:00 Jacky in the Kingdom of Women

(France) The Festival Agency, Paris. 90mins.

Dir: Riad Sattouf. Key cast: Vincent Lacoste, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Didier Bourdon.

In the People’s Democratic Republic of Bubunne, women hold the reins of power. They run the country and impose order, while the men — covered from head to toe with burqas — stay at home.

The General rules her subjects with an iron fist, and dissenters are hung in the town square. In this state where horses are worshipped and the national cuisine is a slimy gruel, young Jacky is preparing for the grand ball, where the General’s daughter is to choose her husband. He is very eager to be chosen, but competition is stiff.

Into the Night Cinematheque3

The Jerusalem Press club, Mishkanot Sha’ananim St, Jerusalem, Israel Editor Wendy Mitchell, wendy. mitchell@screendaily.com, +44 7889 414 856 Chief reporter Andreas Wiseman, andreas. wiseman@screendaily.com, +44 7713 086 674 Reporter Melanie Goodfellow, melanie. goodfellow@btinternet.com Production editor Mark Mowbray, mark. mowbray@screendaily.com, +44 7710 124 065 Sub editors Paul Lindsell, Adam Richmond

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Jerusalem – City of Cinema For almost 50 years, the Jerusalem Foundation has supported the development of film and film making in Jerusalem: n

The Jerusalem Cinematheque

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The Sam Spiegel Film & Television School

n

The Ma'aleh School of Television, Film and Arts

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The Jerusalem Film and Television Fund

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The Jerusalem International Film Festival for over 30 years

To learn more: www.jerusalemfoundation.org The Jerusalem Foundation: For an open, tolerant and pluralistic Jerusalem