Maor Zagori, Yehuda Barkan and the British mandate: what to expect at the Haifa festival this year?

"Valeria Gets Married", one of the leading candidates at the Ophir Awards, will try to sweep the Carmel as well, with an adaptation of Amos Oz's bestseller, "The Gospel According to Yehuda", as well as "Nobody's Children" - a new film by Erez Tadmor.

More at the festival: the new films of Dror Mora and Chaim Bouzglou.

all the details

Walla!

culture

05/09/2022

Monday, September 05, 2022, 3:00 p.m

• Share on Facebook

• Share on WhatsApp

• Share on Twitter

• Share by email

• Share in general

• Comments

  Comments

Arriving in Carmel after touring the Venice Festival.

"Valeria is getting married" (Photo: Guy Raz)

The 38th Haifa Film Festival will start next month, and today (Monday) its impressive Israeli program is revealed, including the participants in the feature and documentary competitions.

Several films by some of the top creators in the Israeli film industry will participate in the feature competition.

Among other things, "Valeria Gets Married" by Michal Vinik, which deals with the reality of the lives of Ukrainian women who marry Israeli men, will participate in it.

This is the leading film in the number of nominations at the upcoming Ophir Awards (on a par with "Karaoke"), and it will arrive at Carmel after a tour at the Venice Film Festival.

In front of him will compete quite a few intriguing films, including "Virgins", Maor Zagori's debut film, which accompanies a boy on his coming-of-age journey and with the participation of actors such as Maor Levy, Liana Ayon, Chen Amsalem and Amos Tamm;

"The Gospel According to Yehuda" by the veteran director Dan Wellman ("My Michael", "Guy Oni"), which unfolds several stories in one winter in Jerusalem in 1959 based on the successful book by Amos Oz;

"My Neighbor Adolf" by Leon Prodavsky, which participated in the Venice Film Festival, and centers on a Holocaust survivor who lives in South America and is convinced that his new neighbor is nothing less than the Nazi dictator hiding under a false identity;

"The Good Spirit" by Eitan Aner, which brings together a bankrupt film producer and a respected former director who has repented and is looking for a comeback, starring Moran Rosenblatt and Rami Hoiberger;

"Nobody's Children" by the director Erez Tadmor ("A Big Story", "The Son of God"), in which one person embarks on a fight against the closing of a shelter for at-risk youth,

and decides to perform an extreme act to prevent this - starring Roi Assaf, who also co-wrote the script;

And Gudis Schneider's "The Oilman", which follows a long-standing relationship between a man and a woman from the days when she was an officer and he was a simple soldier, and again when they meet again and fall in love after more than a decade.

Maor Zagori's first film.

From "Virgins" (Photo: Boaz Yonatan Yaakov)

An innocent neighbor or a dictator in disguise?

From "My Neighbor Adolf" (Photo: Radek Ledzok)

In the documentary competition, "We will not part forever", the film by director Alon Gur-Aria ("The Mossad"), who managed to document the late actor Yehuda Barkan recounting the stages of his life, stands out.

Several other films discuss various health dilemmas and their consequences: Rotem Gross will present "44 Hours", which deals with a young man who is sedated and ventilated with cerebral edema;

Moriah Ben Avot will present "Empty Hands", whose protagonists are forced to decide whether to terminate an advanced pregnancy in the shadow of alarming test results;

With a similar name and theme, Efrat Livy will present "Full hands", which accompanies three religious young women who cannot give birth anymore, yet dream of a big family;

And Amit Miller and Miri Orman will present "Live in the Movie", which centers on an elderly woman who decides to stop eating and taking medicine, and initiates a "farewell party" from life.

Also in the documentary competition: Tomer and Shlomo Slutsky will present "Bronka", which follows the fight for the extradition of an Argentine suspected of crimes against humanity who found refuge in Israel;

Veteran Uri Barbash will present "Nitza's Choice", which deals with a Holocaust survivor who traces her family past;

and Kobi and Elmvark Davidian, who will present "Honey Trap", which describes how an evacuation-construction plan undermines the life of the Ethiopian community in the Kiryat Moshe neighborhood in Rehovot.

Farewell to Yehuda Barkan.

From "We will never part" (Photo: Yoni Menachem)

In addition to the two main competitions, as usual, there will be competitions for short student films, short independent films and short animated films.

And outside of the competition, some more intriguing screenings are expected.

Thus, two new series will be premiered: "Who Heard of a Farm and Nava" created by the team behind "My Successful Sisters" - screenwriters Noa Arenberg and Galit Hogi and director Gori Alfi - and in which Keren Mor and Hana Laslau play two military band members from the 1970s who discover renewed their friendship after 50 years;

and "The Mandate", a three-part documentary mini-series created for the corporation by Yaron Nisky ("Enemies") and Avi Mercado ("You Should Have Been There").

Other special events will be dedicated to the film "The Corridors of Power" by Dror Mora ("The Gatekeepers"), which examines the response of the leaders of the United States to reports of genocide and crimes against humanity since the fall of the Soviet bloc;

For the comedy "The Gate of Flowers - Bab El Ward" by the director Haim Bouzglou, which describes the immigration hardships of a Moroccan family in a fictional Israeli peripheral town named after the film, and stars actors such as Eric Mashali, Int Cohen, Haim Zanati, Raymond Amsalem, Albert Iluz, Sasha Demidov , Zeev Vaif and others;

and the documentary film "One Language - Prophets of Change" by the director Assaf Ben Shitrit, which deals with the ability of music to bring together Israeli and Palestinian youth.

It will also be the film's world premiere.

More in Walla!

Ophir Awards 2022: "Valeria Gets Married" and "Karaoke" lead in the number of nominations

To the full article

And if that's not enough, the festival will also mark the 50th anniversary of Tel Aviv University's Film and Television School with celebratory screenings of five final films by students who would later become key figures in the industry, and in their presence: Menashe Noy's "Lezhardan", Ilit Zakzar's "Tasnim" , "Shanan Shia" by Ari Pullman and Uri Sivan, "Idle" by Michal Vinik and "Lily" by Levana Hakim.

At the same time, the festival will also present renewed versions of two Israeli classics: "Wedding in Jerusalem" by Ranan Shor, which follows the wedding of the children of Uri Zohar and Eric Einstein in 1985;

and the acclaimed "Jellyfish" by Shira Gefen and Etgar Keret.

The festival will be held this year on the holiday of Sukkot, between the dates of October 8-17.

• culture

• Theater

• Cinema news

Tags

• Date palm cedar

• Yehuda Barkan

• Michal Winnick

• Maor Zagori

• Haifa Film Festival