Gitai was accompanied by actresses Maria Zreik, Hana Laslo, Naama Preis and Bahira Ablassi.
This is the first time since the coronavirus crisis began that an Israeli film has screened at an international festival in person. The festival has doubled the number of screenings to accommodate social-distancing rules, and is requiring participants to wear masks, but it is sticking as closely as possible to the regular routine. The Toronto International Film Festival, the other huge festival at this time of year, also has an in-person component, but much of it is online. Israeli films were accepted into the Cannes Film Festival but the festival had to be canceled this year.
Laila in Haifa is a comedy-drama that takes place over the course of one night in a nightclub in Haifa and follows the connected stories of a large group of characters. In addition to the actors who attended the film festival, it also stars Tsahi Halevi, Hisham Suliman, Makram Khoury and Clara Khoury (who are father and daughter), Tom Baum and Amir Khoury.
This is the seventh time that one of Gitai’s films has taken part in the main competition at Venice, which awards the prestigious Golden Lion prize. Nine other Gital films have competed and participated in other sections of the festival.
Israeli films have often won prizes at Venice. Among the many Israeli prizewinners there were Samuel Maoz’s Lebanon, which won the Golden Lion in 2009, and Hadas Yaron, the star of Rama Burshtein’s Fill the Void, who won the Volpi Cup Best Actress Award in 2012.
Gitai said, “It is a great honor to participate in the Venice Film Festival, the oldest festival in the world! Against all odds, they managed to raise a physical event with screenings in front of a large audience. Laila in Haifa emphasizes how there is no substitute for the human encounter and physical dialogue, which is also taking place here in Venice for the first time since the outbreak of the corona plague."