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Filtered By: Arabic Clear All

200 Meters - SFJFF41 Centerpiece Narrative

A Palestinian father embarks on a perilous journey to reach his hospitalized son in this tense yet tender family drama about the human toll of oppression.

500 Dunam on the Moon

About This Film

Beyond the Walls

About This Film

Blush

Seventeen-year-old Naama is thoroughly bored with her overbearing family and uneventful suburban school days. That is until bleached-blonde bad girl Dana shows up with her flirtatious smile and a bag of weed. But while Naama is both partying hard and falling hard for Dana, her sister goes missing, and the whole family is deeply rattled. Blush is a portrait of modern Israel through the eyes of the youth who are pushing the boundaries. —Alexis Whitman

A Bottle in the Gaza Sea

This modern-day Romeo-and-Juliet tale is set in Israel and Gaza. After witnessing a suicide bombing, a girl writes a letter to Gaza seeking understanding and sends it into the Gaza Sea in a bottle. It’s found by a young Gaza man who emails back. Though they live less than 100 kilometers apart, they communicate only through emails and letters. While they often disagree, their relationship deepens as the political situation worsens. [MINIGUIDE 71/70]

The Bubble

Eytan Fox (Walk on Water, Yossi and Jagger) continues his extraordinary run of sleek, chic films that define the contradictions of modern Israeli life. A trio of charming gay and straight twenty-somethings share a flat in a hip Tel Aviv district. But the carefree “bubble” they live in threatens to burst when one of them falls in love with a young Palestinian man.

Budrus

When Palestinian Ayed Morrar learned the Israeli security barrier would veer from the border separating Israel and the Palestinian territories, and would instead cut through his West Bank village, he decided to organize, galvanizing both Palestinians and Israelis in an effective strategy of nonviolent protest. This groundbreaking documentary neither romanticizes nor demonizes the many viewpoints it reveals, instead capturing with raw intensity the power of ordinary people fighting peaceably for change.

Dancing in Jaffa

World champion ballroom dancer Pierre Dulaine has a dream: to see Jewish and Palestinian Israeli children dance together. A passionate man with humble beginnings in Jaffa, he returns to attempt what seems to be an impossible feat: teaching children ballroom dance in a divided society. With warmth and tenderness, this inspiring documentary captures the children’s amazing transformation, offering hope that for a new generation Dulaine’s dream will become reality.

Description of a Memory

Chris Marker’s landmark documentary about Israel, Description of a Struggle, thoroughly examined, critiqued and predicted the newly created state’s past, present and future. Nearly 50 years later, director Dan Geva looks to answer many of the questions originally raised by Marker as he attempts to track down the people featured in Marker’s film, with surprising and emotionally complex results, in Description of a Memory.

Disturbing The Peace

This inspiring documentary finds a spirit of compassion and empathy in an unexpected place: among combatants from both sides of the Israeli/Palestinian divide. Israeli soldiers and Palestinian fighters come together to form Combatants for Peace, a nonviolent group that uses dialogue, theater and art to try to end the conflict. Disturbing the Peace doesn’t shy away from harsh realities and, somehow, still leaves you inspired. —Tamar FoxDirector Stephen Apkon in personPreceded by Hitchhikers, Dir. Yair Agmon

East Jerusalem, West Jerusalem

In the spirit of determined optimism legendary Israeli singer/songwriter David Broza pierces the divide with a new music album East Jerusalem/West Jerusalem. Broza’s vision brings him to the heart of the conflict, a divided Jerusalem where his musician friends, including Grammy-winning Steve Earle, Palestinian Israeli singer Mira Awad and Iraqi Israeli Yair Dalal, take a remarkable journey outside the political walls that is rich with musical improvisation and performance.

Forget Baghdad: Jews and Arabs - The Iraqi Connection

FORGET BAGHDAD: Jews and Arabs - The Iraqi ConnectionThe son of a Shi'ite emigrant family that fled Iraq for political reasons, Swiss film director Samir has created a brilliant tour-de-force in his new documentary FORGET BAGHDAD. This entertaining, ironic and visually stunning film essay is an exploration of the lives of Iraqi Jewish writers in Israel, former members of the Communist Party, in which Samir’s father was also a member.

Foxtrot

In Samuel Maoz's award-winning, acclaimed narrative feature, Michael and Dafna are devastated when army officials show up at their home to announce the death of their son Jonathan. While his sedated wife rests, Michael spirals into a whirlwind of anger only to experience one of life's unfathomable twists, which rival the surreal military experiences of his son.

Free Zone

When Rebecca, an American, ditches her fiancé in Israel, she finds solace with tough, pragmatic Hanna, a Russian-Israeli limo driver. Hanna is headed for the "free zone" in Jordan to pick up money owed to her husband. There, they cross paths with Leila, a Palestinian businesswoman, and the three women form an inextricable bond despite their disparate backgrounds and views. A film about borders and terrain, both political and psychological.

God's Slave

Buenos Aires, 1994. Ahmed, a committed Muslim martyr, works as a successful young surgeon. But his destiny, when the inevitable day arrives, is to carry out an attack for radical Islam. Meanwhile, David, a cold-blooded Mossad agent, awaits the opportunity to exact some very personal revenge. This pulse-pounding thriller pits two determined men against each other in the aftermath of the deadly real-life bombings in Buenos Aries against the Jewish community.

Holy Land

Gripping from start to finish, Holy Land documents the lives of those who call the West Bank home as you’ve never seen them before. Following three Israelis and three Palestinians, from an ultra-orthodox Jewish settler to a left-wing Israeli activist to a young Palestinian protestor, over the course of a year, this fascinating documentary paints a complex portrait of the people who live, fight and sometimes die for the land they consider holy.

Hot House

Nearly 10,000 Palestinians are incarcerated in Israel today. Most Israelis regard these “security prisoners” as criminals but to the Palestinians they are freedom fighters, and martyrs. Granted extraordinary access to the highest-security institutions, filmmaker Shimon Dotan uncovers a startling truth: Israeli prisons have become a breeding ground for the next generation of Palestinian leaders and a hotbed for terrorist plots. —David Courier.

In Between

Sex, drugs, techno, and . . . Arab traditions? What sounds like an unlikely combination exerts a strong emotional attraction in this female dramedy about friendship, love and the search for independence by three young, hip, Palestinian women. When the Muslim—and religious—Nour moves in with hard-partying Laila and Salma, all three begin their own journeys of self-discovery and gain an understanding of the male-dominated society in which they live but refuse to reconcile themselves to.

The Insult

A minor incident between a Lebanese Christian and a Palestinian refugee turns into an explosive trial that ends up dividing the two communities.

Kedma

In veteran director Amos Gitai’s majestic narrative, the Kedma, a European cargo freighter packed with concentration camp survivors, heads towards Palestine as underground Jewish forces prepare for its arrival and British soldiers position themselves to stop its unauthorized landing. Gitai recreates a tough, anguished reconstruction of an episode in the founding of the state of Israel, which profoundly impacted Jews and Palestinians .

Knowledge Is the Beginning

Conductor Daniel Barenboim believes that “a life without music is impoverished.” In the 1990s, Barenboim and the late Palestinian-born writer Edward Said created the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, comprising talented young musicians from Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Tunisia. The film, an unusual hybrid of a concert movie and a documentary about artistic diplomacy, eloquently chronicles the life of the orchestra.

The Law in These Parts

Inventive Israeli filmmaker Ra’anan Alexandrowicz (Inner Tour, SFJFF 2001; James’ Journey to Jerusalem) conducts an award-winning investigation into the legal system that has governed Palestinians in the West Bank since the 1967 war. Interviewing the judges and lawyers entrusted with interpreting the law, the filmmaker raises the core issue: Can a modern democracy impose a prolonged military occupation on another people while retaining its core democratic values? [MINIGUIDE 67/70]

Open Bethlehem

SNEAK PREVIEWBethlehem is revered as one of the world’s holiest places by Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. Yet for a Palestinian teenager growing up in the 1980s, the city felt small and stifling. To her proud father’s chagrin, Leila Sansour left Bethlehem for Europe at age 17. Open Bethlehem chronicles return to her homeland, and charts how Israeli settlements and military restrictions haves affected the political and cultural landscape of this ancient city.

Oriented

A striking new documentary from Israel, ORIENTED examines life for gay Israelis and Palestinians in Tel Aviv.

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