Part of a Director Spotlight on Netalie Braun, along with Shooting
Director Netalie Braun expected to attend
Oxygen, winner of the 2025 Jerusalem Film Festival Best Israeli Feature Award, is a beautiful, accomplished feature that boldly explores maternal love and obsession in a country where every knock on the door can portend bad news about the death of a child. Anat (Dana Ivgy, whose break out role was in Keren Yedaya’s 2004 Cannes winner Or), is a school teacher, lapsed poet, and mother caught in the sandwich generation of Israel: her young son Ido (Ben Sultan) is serving in the army and her father Yaki (Marek Rozenbaum) is an elderly war hero experiencing PTSD.
When war erupts in the north, Anat’s angst and the film’s tension rise as she tries to prevent her son from participating. When she learns he has volunteered for a tour of duty in Lebanon, her love and fear push her to contemplate radical choices. Netalie Braun’s elegant drama, stunningly shot by Itay Marom, has a subtle, lyrical soundtrack and features powerful performances from an ensemble cast at the top of their game. — Nancy Fishman
JFI Supported: 2024 Completion Grant
Netalie Braun is a director, screenwriter, and producer working across fiction and documentary film. Her feature Oxygen (2025) won Best Film at the Jerusalem Film Festival, and her documentary Shooting (2025) premiered at Telluride and received the Jury Award at DocAviv. Her films have screened at major international festivals including the Berlinale and IDFA. She heads the MFA Program at the Steve Tisch School of Film and Television at Tel Aviv University.