Also Directed by Ran Tal
This poetic ensemble of personal stories converging over the course of a full year is a cinematic portrait of contemporary Israel: multifaceted, diverse, contradictory, complex. At Sakhne, one of the most popular parks in Israel, a varied collection of characters—recent immigrants, Zionist pioneers, Christians, Arabs and non-believers—coexist in an intricate microcosm of Israeli society. There are stories of camaraderie, loneliness, tolerance, intolerance, alienation and love. And each one, despite religion and politics, reminds us that we are, after all, one and the same. As summer turns to fall and winter, then spring, stories renew themselves with each new visitor that passes through the park gates.
The Museum is a film that observes, examines and ponders Israel's most important cultural institution, the Israel Museum. The film follows the visitors, observes the observers, listens to the speakers and descends to the storerooms, labs and conference rooms. The American museum director, the singing security guard, the Jerusalemite curator, the Haredi kashrut inspector, the Palestinian guide and the visitor who lost her vision are some of the characters that take part in a chain of activities which add up to the museum. For about 18 months director Ran Tal collected footage of the daily routine of the museum that seeks to both reflect and mold the Israeli legacy and culture.
A documentary on how children are conforming to living in an Israeli kibbutz.
Skin Deep is a tragic comedy of a destined loser who will do anything to prove that the destiny is wrong. A story of a hopeless romantic who wants to surprise his love one with a tattoo on his left arm carrying her name, and ends up by surprising her with another lover. Now he has tow options: abandon his belief in an eternal love or find another girl with the same name.
Can a leader succeed in influencing the world? Or is he, as any other human being, only a nutshell tossed to the waves of history with no ability to affect it? Tolstoy pondered this question in War and Peace. Ehud Barak, controversial former prime minister and a decorated commander on the battlefield, contemplates it in this film. Twenty years after he was forced to resign from the premiership due to the failure of the 2000 Camp David summit, 78-year-old Barak observes his own history and the history of the State of Israel with disillusioned clarity, while trying to figure it all out - "What if?"
