The highest profile feature film is Yaron Shani’s Reborn, the third film in his Love trilogy. Reborn is about three women, all of whom have a frightening secret.
By HANNAH BROWNPhoto of the man hugging the woman in a hospital bed is from The Art of Waiting and it shows Roy Assaf and Nelly Tagar(photo credit: DANIEL MILLER)
The 35th Haifa International Film Festival, which will take place from October 12-21, just announced its Israeli lineup on Tuesday and there will be six feature films and eight documentaries in competition.The highest profile feature film is Yaron Shani’s Reborn, the third film in his Love trilogy. Reborn is about three women, all of whom have a frightening secret, and what happens as their paths converge. The second part in this trilogy, Chained, won the top prize at the Jerusalem Film Festival and is a nominated for multiple Ophir Awards, including Best Picture. Chained and the earlier installment, Stripped, are dark and not easy to watch, but perhaps Reborn will take a lighter tone. Shani’s film, Ajami, was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language film.A very different side of Israeli cinema will be showcased in The Art of Waiting, the latest film by Erez Tadmor, a director whose movies tend to be crowd pleasers. It’s the comic and dramatic story of a couple who are going through fertility treatments and it stars two of Israel’s most popular actors, Nelly Tagar (Zero Motivation) and Roy Assaf (False Flag).Oren Gerner’s Africa will have its world premiere soon at the Toronto International Film Festival. It stars his own father in a story about a retired man coping with growing old.Evgeny Ruman’s Golden Voices is about two Russian voice actors who were stars in the Soviet Union and who discover that Israel is not waiting with open arms when they emigrate in the 1990s.Mirage, by David Ben Ari, is a film noir about a young killer-turned-state’s-witness who is set to testify against felons who have kidnapped the girl he loves, and details a night in which he joins forces with her father to try to save her.Mr. Kohl’s Final Hour is based on the award-winning play by Yehoshua Sobol about a man who has an hour to try to change the verdict against him before he begins a prison sentence, and it was directed by Doron Eran.Out of competition, Ludi Boeken’s Nelson, the story of a soldier who deserts the Israeli military and travels the world in a quest for revenge, will be shown.Another out-of-competition film, The Electrifiers by Boaz Armoni, is about a one-hit wonder rock band that plays at nursing homes and other downscale venues. Its soloist still thinks of himself as a rock star about to make it and an opportunity comes along that could prove him right.Eight documentaries will be competing in the Best Israeli Documentary section. They include the darkly comic 100 Million Views, by Itamar Rose, who sets out to uncover the secret of how a video goes viral on YouTube.
Tal Michael’s Bukra Fil Mish-Mish is the story of Didier Frenkel, who discovers after his uncles’ deaths that they had a life they kept hidden as the animators behind Mish-Mish Effendi, the Arab equivalent of Mickey Mouse. He tries to restore the animated footage they left behind.Ayelet Dekel’s Refuge examines the day-to-day lives of women in a shelter for domestic violence victims.Ilan Rubin Fields’s The Prophet is a look at the life and legacy of Meir Kahane.Out of competition, two documentaries will be shown: I Was Not Born a Mistake, by Racheli Rusinek and Eyal Ben Moshe, about transgender people in the ultra-Orthodox community, and The Black Book, the story of a book about the mass murder and resistance of Soviet Jews during World War II that was suppressed by Stalin.
