Thirty-nine new Israeli movies will be shown at the 37th Haifa International Film Festival, which will take place from September 19-28.
The competition for Best Israeli Feature Films will have five premieres. Among these will be Eran Kolirin’s latest film, Let There Be Morning, which tells the story of a Palestinian man attending a wedding in the village where he grew up, who gets stuck there. Based on a book by Sayed Kashua, it was shown at Cannes this year and is nominated for 15 Ophir Awards. It stars Alex Bakri and Salim Dau (Avanti Popolo).
Ophir Awards are the top prize for excellence in the Israel film industry, known locally as known as the Israeli Oscars or the Israeli Academy Awards.
Roy Krispel’s Abu Omar tells the story of a man who wants to return to his West Bank village to bury his two-year-old son, who died at an Israeli hospital. But due to a curfew, he cannot cross the checkpoint and teams up with a young pregnant woman to complete his sad journey.
Amir Manor’s The House on Fin Street, which is nominated for five Ophirs, is about a young woman from a Russian family in the south of Israel who cleans bathrooms in the bus station and falls for a man who invites her to Tel Aviv and turns out to be a pimp.
Doron and Yoav Paz, the brothers who made JeruZalem (the zombies in the Old City horror movie) have a new film, Plan A. A fact-based English language movie, it stars Michael Aloni (Shtisel), August Diehl and Sylvia Hoeks in the story of a group of young Jewish Holocaust survivors who planned to poison the German water system in 1945. Israeli poet Abba Kovner was one of the leaders of this group.
Marat Parkhomovsky’s Tel Aviv is about a young couple whose world is shaken up by an unexpected event that forces them to make some tough choices.
A quite varied slate of documentaries includes movies about a unit of border police in Jerusalem that includes Jews, Muslims and Christians; a look at the closure of strip clubs in Tel Aviv from the point of view of the strippers; the story a suitcase of documents from Holocaust-era Berlin that reveals secrets; a 70s case of government corruption; how pollution is affecting the Dead Sea; the generation of Israelis now turning 40 and several more.
Yaron Shamir is the acting director of the festival, after longtime director Pnina Blayer retired.
The full program of the festival will be available soon at https://www.haifaff.co.il/eng