The festival features premieres of films, both full-length features, documentaries and short films, from Israel and abroad.
By HANNAH BROWN
The first Tel Aviv Jewish Film Festival is being held through Tuesday online, as part of the Hanukkah season, as an initiative of the Brodt Center for Jewish Culture of the Municipality of Tel Aviv-Yafo in cooperation with Makor Rishon, with the aim of presenting Jewish cinema from a different perspective.It features premieres of films, full-length features, documentaries and short films, from Israel and abroad. It will be held online and will be broadcast via the Global Press system.The winners in the short film competition will receive cash prizes.Among the events will be Jewish Art in a Master Class, with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, David Mamet - known for such plays and films as Glengarry Glen Ross, Wag the Dog and House of Games - speaking to Yair Raveh, who runs the Cinemascope website.Many of the films in the festival are very topical, and they include Anxious, a film by actor Gili Shushan who is now ultra-Orthodox and lives in Safed, about how his family coped when they tested positive for the coronavirus.Yehudah is a portrait of Temple Mount activist Yehudah Glick, who has been described by the police as the most dangerous man in the Middle East.Femma’s Riddle: A Rescuer’s Prey tells the incredible story of Femma Fleijsman, a 92-year-old Holocaust survivor from Amsterdam, who sparked a public debate regarding the justification for awarding the title of Righteous Among the Nations on behalf of Yad Vashem to Hans Georg Calmeyer and the plan to establish a museum in his name in Germany.Hedva Goldschmidt, the founder of Go2Films, a leading Israeli film distribution company, is the artistic consultant to the festival.Shir Sivan Monsongo of the Brodt Center, Moriah Shalom and Avital Indig of Makor Rishon are the festival directors.The festival is supported by the Culture Ministry, the Department of Jewish Culture in the Higher Education Ministry and the Tel Aviv Municipality Department of Culture.