Voice Over
Fifty years after Slow Down by Avraham Heffner won a prize at Venice Film Festival, top alumni of the Jerusalem Sam Spiegel Film School challenge the 1968 legendary black and white
Eitan Anner
Nir Bergman
Maya Kenig
Tom Shoval
Avraham Heffner
Avraham Heffner
Sigalit Lipshitz
Orit Fouks Rotem
Casts & Crew
Also Directed by Eitan Anner
Chen, a young kid, is battling a cultural conflict between his Russian born mother and Israeli father. She is cultured and used to the finer things in life, including theater and fine dining. He is gruff on the outside but sweet on the inside - a Sabra; and looking to make his young son a man rather than the wimp his mother is raising. One day, Chen stumbles upon a ballroom dance class for young people and sees Natalie, a stunning Russian young girl he falls in love with immediately. His interest in Natalie leads him to taking ballroom dancing and to ultimately bridging the cultural divide of his own family - through the Cha Cha and the Tango. The teachers are a pair of former Russian world champions who never quite fulfilled their potential, but find themselves battling their demons through the instructions of the kids.
In present day Jerusalem, a city increasingly dominated by religious fanaticism, Naomi, a secular young woman seeks refuge from the pressure of her life as a concert pianist. Despite her intentions to stay alone, however, Naomi quickly makes two unexpected connections- one with a musically gifted Ultra-Orthodox young boy who lives in her building and the other, with Fabrizio, a charismatic Italian monk and organist. While these relationships allow Naomi to reconnect with her love of music and sense of meaning, they also make her a target in her new community. Faced with escalating isolation and violence, Naomi must learn to use music as a bridge to overcome towering religious barriers.
Sharon, a dedicated and ambitious Tel Aviv art house producer who is on the verge of bankruptcy, gets a chance to save her professional future and self-esteem: to collaborate with Uzi Silver, a revered past director, who has repented And became a rabbi, and now wants to make his comeback film - an adaptation of King Saul's biblical tragedy. But working with Silver is more like a war than a production,
What will Riki do after Asher, her fiancé, tells her that he got second thoughts regarding their wedding?..
Also Directed by Nir Bergman
Directed by multi-award winner Nir Bergman (Broken Wings), Saving Neta tells the stories of four women whose lives change after their brief encounter with a man called Neta. Humour, drama, love and hope, a powerful and moving portrait of family relationships and parenthood in modern life.
Interviews with band members, music from the band and clips detailing their lives in Tel Aviv and their ultimate move away from Israel to London, where they hoped to make a name for themselves. The band split up while in London.
"Intimate Grammar" is a sensitive study of an inner journey rich in detailed observation. A dysfunctional family and delayed puberty make life miserable for a pre-adolescent growing up in Jerusalem in the 1960's. The film, an adaptation of David Grossman's "The Book of Intimate Grammar", shows our hero, Aharon Kleinfeld, striving to survive his domineering mother, his anti-intellectual father and his own diminutive stature in a setting of a lower-middle-class housing development where gossip is rampant and appearances are all important.
Aharon has devoted his life to raising his son Uri. They live together in a gentle routine, away from the real world. But Uri is autistic, and now as a young adult it might be time for him to live in a specialized home. While on their way to the institution, Aharon decides to run away with his son and hits the road, knowing that Uri is not ready for this separation. Or is it, in fact, his father who is not ready?
Based on the turbulent life story of the poet Yona Wallach. The film focuses on the period in which she was just a young village girl, a war orphan, clawing her way through the world of Hebrew poetry. With the outbreak consciousness and transition from the village to the big city, Jonah, which examines the limits of herself and wants to know everything, experienced a mental breakdown. Spirit of the times, Jonah was treated LSD. The struggle to return to write and occupy its own place heavy charge her, but earns her immortality on the Hebrew poetry shelf.
Daphne and her four children try to cope with the abrupt death of husband/father. As the family seems to fall apart, a sudden incident gives them a chance to heal their 'broken wings'.
Ten year-old Noam is a latchkey child whose parents have temporarily separated. While waiting for his parents to reunite, Noam fulfills a parental role to his sisters, even as he tests his own boundaries in a dangerous children's game. The family’s suspended routine will be shaken once more, when Noam’s mother announces she has important news.
Also Directed by Maya Kenig
Somewhere in Jérusalem, two girls have been sharing an apartment for two years. Now one of them is leaving, and the other, while searching for an appropriate replacement, can't let go of what was between them, or what it could have been.
In this bittersweet family comedy, shy teenager Libby moves back to Israel to live with her hapless father Shaul, unexpectedly finding herself without a home as war breaks out around them. Shaul devises a creative solution: posing as refugees, they are taken in by a wealthy family in Jerusalem. Finally in a “normal” household, Shaul and Libby begin to build their father-daughter relationship, but their false identities can’t last forever.
Also Directed by Tom Shoval
Yonatan, a young rascal, needs fifteen Shekels. Everything else is not important right now.
Brothers Yaki and Shaul live with their parents in Petah Tikva, a satellite town of Tel Aviv. Yaki is doing military service. As for all other 18-year-old Israelis, this means he is allowed to carry a gun. This weapon gives the brothers the power to change their lives and that of their family – or so they believe.
A popular radio show helps Nissim to win his girlfriend's heart again.
The widow of a multimillionaire decides to convert her luxury home into a refuge for the needy but her worthy act does not pan out as expected
Also Directed by Avraham Heffner
An Israeli drama
10 years after he left Israel and "played it big-time in America", Benny Shpitz returns for a visit, self-exploring his youth, friends, dreams, beliefs and idol, Daniel Wax, who symbolized the "beautiful Israeli". Shpitz finds out his friends are melancholic, unsatisfied with marriage life, hiding a vast hole in their sole. In a wider context, Israel post 67' will no longer be the society that it was meant to be.
The essence of a quarrel and reconciliation between an elderly couple in Tel Aviv in 1967.
Yiddish live theater, a formerly lively theatrical form, is barely sustained by a few aging aficionados and its loyal but aged audience. Laura Adler is a big star of one of these troupes. She is attractive, middle-aged and quite content to spend her days performing obscure theater in her backwater town. One day, however, she learns that she is being considered for a part in a major U.S. film, and, while she is absorbing that news, she has an affair with a young man. Later, when she learns that she has terminal cancer, she decides to spend her remaining days onstage with her theatrical friends and family.
Clara, a polish born Jew, living in Tel Aviv of the 1970's, has her ideas about how people should behave, and runs everybody's life accordingly: her husband, her sisters, their husbands, their children, her brother who lives in London (probably because it was the only way to get away from her...). Whenever something "improper" does happen, Clara's way of handling it is simply to shove it under the carpet and ignore it completely, as if it never happened. 3 basic rules, are, of course: 1. Never marry some one "under" your class (Or the class you think you are). 2. Never become pregnant out of wedlock and 3. No Abortions. As one may expect, everything crumbles when her niece gives her no option, but to break at least one of those rules
Also Directed by Sigalit Lipshitz
Estranged sisters bond over pregnancy.
Also Directed by Orit Fouks Rotem
A pink swan floats across a turquoise pool, against the desert. It’s Dana’s bachelorette party. A chance encounter with Hamis, an African asylum seeker, will bring the girls face to face with an uncomfortable truth.
Alma, a young director, seeks an actor and actress for a violent key scene which she has written.