Iris Alush wants to be a fashion designer, and her big move from Israel to Paris seems full of promise. The city is as beautiful and romantic as she imagined, and Iris has found a great deal on an apartment through a fellow Israeli expat. On her way to work at a café, she likes to walk past the acclaimed fashion school she is planning to attend. It all seems to be lining up until something happens that completely upends her plans. Blue Marks is an intimate, delicate depiction of struggle and revenge. However, amidst the trauma and repression, Iris experiences glimmers of friendship and belonging in unexpected places. Director Dina Riklis adapts Emilie Moatti’s debut novel of the same name, bringing forth questions of identity through various diasporas: Iris’ ancestors are Tunisian, her mother begs her to move back to Netanya, and her friend from the Ivory Coast questions her desire to remain in Paris. The result is an intricate portrait of Iris and her fate. —Karina Curry
World Premiere
Dina Zvi-Riklis is an Israeli writer and director for film and television. She began her career as a script supervisor in 1976 before transitioning to writing and directing in 1984. A graduate of the Theatre Department at Tel Aviv University, her work spans feature films, television drama, and documentary series. Her credits include The Photographer (2021), which premiered at Series Mania and received a Honorable Mention at the Lighthouse Festival in New York; Ma’abarot (2017–2019), which won the Israeli TV Academy Award; and feature films In the Fifth Heaven (2012) and Three Mothers (2006), both of which screened internationally and received multiple awards.