TLVFest, the International Tel Aviv LBGTQ+ Film Festival, will be running at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque from December 21-31, after having been postponed from its previously scheduled date in October due to the war.
Screenings and events will also be held at a number of venues around the city.
This year, as always, the festival will feature the best of recent LBGTQ+ cinema from Israel and around the world, competitions, and special events. Actors Ayelet Robinson and Gal Nissim will present filmmaker Avigail Sperber with the festival’s achievement award. But, due to the ongoing war, it will be a more modest event, without the usual parties and guests from abroad.
The festival is intended to bring comfort during challenging times
Yair Hochner, founder and director of the festival said, “This is one of the most difficult times that our country has known, our hearts are completely broken. I hope that the festival will succeed in creating an inclusive, comforting, and loving community atmosphere for cinema fans wherever they are.”
Its opening film will be the much-anticipated All of Us Strangers by Andrew Haigh, a genre-bending blend of romance, mystery, and fantasy about a screenwriter (Andrew Scott, best known for playing the hot priest on Fleabag) who returns to his hometown to write an autobiographical screenplay.
Once there, he begins a romance with a mysterious stranger (Paul Mescal of Aftersun and Normal People) and discovers to his amazement that his parents (Claire Foy of The Crown and Jamie Bell of Defiance), who died 30 years earlier, seem to be alive and look just as they once did. Scott just received a Golden Globe nomination for his performance, and both of the leads are among the most interesting actors currently working.
The movie will be released in Lev Cinemas in 2024.
The closing film will be Glitter & Doom, directed by Tom Gustafson. The film is a musical set to songs by the Indigo Girls, an acclaimed lesbian duo, and tells the story of a musician and a clown who meet and fall in love. It features many cameos by musicians, such as Kate Pierson of the B-52s.
Maryam Keshavarz’s The Persian Version, which won the coveted Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival in 2023, tells the story of a mother and daughter who reevaluate their relationship and learn a shocking secret as their large Iranian-American family gathers for a celebration.
Pedro Almodovar’s latest film, a short Western, Strange Way of Life, will be shown. It stars Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal as, respectively, a sheriff and the man he once loved 25 years before, who wants to save his outlaw son.
THE CLASSICS Section is particularly rich this year. It includes a digitally restored version of the late Amos Guttman’s 1992 Amazing Grace, a look at two families with gay sons, set against the backdrop of the AIDS epidemic, starring Gal Hoyberger and Sharon Alexander.
Another Israeli film in the Classics Section will be Dan Woman’s 2006 film, Tied Hands, which tells the story of a gay dancer (Ido Tadmor), dying of AIDS in Tel Aviv. His mother (Gila Almagor), who has never come to terms with her son’s sexuality, is moved by his suffering and goes on a nighttime odyssey through the city to try to get some marijuana to relieve his pain.
The 1993 The Wedding Banquet is one of Ang Lee’s first films and still one of his best. It tells the story of a young Taiwanese man (Winston Chao), who is gay and happily living in New York with his partner (Mitchell Lichtenstein). But when his parents come to New York for a visit, he cannot bear to admit to them that he is gay and he hastily marries female Taiwanese artist (May Chin), who is trying to break into the New York art world and needs a green card, but his parents insist on giving the couple a lavish wedding. It’s a classic farce but also very touching.
Chasing Amy, the 1997 American indie directed by Kevin Smith (Clerks), tells the story of a comic-book artist (Ben Affleck), who falls for a colleague (Joey Lauren Adams), who turns out to be a lesbian.
The Gala Section includes Theater Camp, directed by Molly Gordon (who plays Claire on The Bear) and Nick Lieberman, and starring Gordon and Ben Platt. It’s about a theater camp facing financial collapse, which must be saved by an eccentric – to put it mildly – group of teachers. Its tagline is: There are no small parts, only small children.
Ira Sachs’s Passages stars Franz Rogowski (Undine) as a self-centered gay movie director, who unexpectedly falls in love with a young woman (Adele Exarchopoulos of Blue is the Warmest Color), which disrupts his relationship with his husband (Ben Wishaw of This is Going to Hurt).
Catherine Corsini’s Homecoming is about a Parisian nanny (Aissatou Diallo Sagna) who gets the chance to spend the summer in Corsica, where she and her daughters once lived but fled after a family tragedy years ago.
The full schedule is on the festival’s website at tlvfest.com/