Israeli films

A member of an Israeli anti-terrorist unit clashes with a group of young radicals.

In the heart of Jaffa, Reuven's garage is a family business. His daughter Mali and his son Meir, as well as Toufik, a young Palestinian, work there. No one suspects that Mali and Toufik have been in love for years. As the two lovers are secretly making their wedding arrangements, tension builds between Meir and Toufik.

Aviva, a hard-working hotel cook in the northern Israeli town of Tiberias, is on the brink of finally fulfilling her lifelong dream. For years she kept her remarkable writing abilities under wraps, until her sister, Anita, introduces her to Oded, an accomplished novelist. Immediately recognizing Aviva's talent, Oded takes her under his wing, promising to help her achieve greatness. But the journey to greatness effects her life and the lives of her family - her unemployed husband, her trouble children, her unstable mother, and primarily her sister, a funny and sensitive woman who have her own dreams. When Aviva discovers that Oded has other plans for her work, her world collapses.

A Palestinian-Israeli boy named Eyad is sent to a prestigious boarding school in Jerusalem, where he struggles with issues of language, culture, and identity.

Returning to civilian life after twenty-seven years in the army isn't as easy as David had hoped. It's hard to re-establish daily contact with his family, with the dimension of his home and, above all, with the new Israel, an ultra-competitive society obsessed with success. Thus, the opportunity to join a company which produces nutritional supplements seems like a possible escape to be seized without hesitation. But David doesn't know how much his country has changed.

THE FAREWELL PARTY is a compassionate dark comedy about friendship and knowing when to say goodbye. A group of friends at a Jerusalem retirement home build a machine for self-euthanasia in order to help their terminally ill friend. When rumors of the machine begin to spread, more and more people ask for their help, and the friends are faced with an emotional dilemma.

While her workaholic mother is away from home, 12-year-old Adar and her stepfather push their role-playing games into dangerous territory. As Adar attempts to delicately maneuver between the tempestuous and fiery relationships at home, she meets Alan - a dreamy boy who keenly resembles her, and brings him into the family. Alan leads Adar through a dark journey between childhood and adolescence, reality and fantasy, which will forever change the rules of the game in the household.

In Jerusalem's orthodox neighborhoods, it's Succoth, seven days celebrating life's essentials in a sukkah, a temporary shack of both deprivation and hospitality. A devout couple, Moshe and Mali, married nearly five years and childless, are broke and praying for a miracle. Suddenly, miracles abound: a friend finds Moshe a sukkah he says is abandoned, Moshe is the beneficiary of local charitable fundraising, and two escaped convicts arrive on Moshe and Mali's doorstep in time to be their ushpizin - their guests. The miracles then become trials. Rabbinical advice, absolution, an effort to avoid anger, and a 1000-shekel citron figure in Moshe's dark night of the soul.

In a world that does not appreciate artists, where sensitive souls don't stand a chance, a poetry-loving kindergarten teacher discovers a child poet and decides to take it upon herself to nurture him. To save his greatness from the world, to salvage him from the banal, the mediocre and the crude - to save him from life itself. It is the story of a female Don Quixote, who strives to save the world through the poetry of a child, and of a pensive child who has no desire to be saved.

In 1980 the black Falashas in Ethiopia are recognised as genuine Jews. In turn they are secretly carried to Israel. The day before the transport the son of a Jewish mother dies. In his place and with his name (Schlomo) she takes a Christian 9-year-old boy. Upon arrival this second mother dies. Schlomo is adopted by a good family but remains depressed until he secretly sends a letter to his real mother. From the beginning he experiences large and small racist difficulties. In his teens he and Sarah fall in love. Her father is an extreme racist. Schlomo tries to gain "real Jewishness" by winning a competition in Bible interpretation. No change of Sarah's father's attitude. Disappointed he goes to the police and reports himself as not being a Jew. But the police officer just gives him a scolding. "The newspapers are full of that stuff, the Falashas are no Jews. Now they begin to believe it themselves." His adoptive parents send him to France to study medicine. When he afterwards marries Sarah she loses her family and her status as a "white Jew". But he dares not tell her the truth until she becomes pregnant. She leaves him, but only because he had not trusted that she would love him as much anyway. His adoptive mother reconciles them. Sarah's first line when she returns: "Unbelievable what three mothers would do for you." But she makes a condition for returning: Schlomo must meet his real mother again. As a doctor he takes a job in the Ethiopian fugitive camp where she is still alive.

Zaza is a 31-year old Israeli bachelor, handsome and intelligent, and his family wants to see him married. But tradition dictates that Zaza has to choose a young virgin. She must be beautiful and from a good family, preferably rich. Zaza's parents, Yasha and Lily drag Zaza to meet potential brides and their families. Zaza has no choice. He plays along with his family, advocates of the suffocating traditions of their Georgian Jewish heritage. But Zaza always manages to somehow get out of being engaged. What his parents don't know is that Zaza is already in love. Judith is sensuous, strong and intriguing. She's also a divorcée with a 6-year-old daughter. So Zaza has kept Judith a secret from his family. He will have to choose between respect of the strict confines of family and tradition, or the love of his life.

Cheli, 27, is raising her mentally challenged 24yo sister, Gaby, alone. When the social worker finds out that Cheli leaves Gaby alone in the house while Cheli is at work, Cheli is compelled to place Gaby in a day program. For the first time in her life, Cheli shares Gaby's care with someone else; her daily routine collapses and the huge void left by Gaby's absence makes room for a man in Cheli's life in the shape of Zohar, who inadvertently creates a chink in the sisters' symbiotic relationship. While Cheli hangs on to Zohar's love for all she's worth, her inability to have a normal, intimate, and emotional relationship with anyone but her sister forces them into a twisted threesome, where boundaries between love, sacrifice, nurturing, and torturing are crossed.

This is a story of fatherhood. Ovadia is the strongest and most violent doorman of Tel Aviv night clubs. He has no fear of anything and he never lost a fight . His biggest dream is to become a father, he and his wife Rachel are trying to get pregnant for almost five years. A small time gangster named Shalom Shalom Rozental sees a great potential in Ovadia. Ovadia sees this as great option to start an expensive treatment for his wife. As soon as Rachel gets pregnant, he decides to stop working for Shalom. It's not that easy.

The story takes place in Haifa, Israel, in 1979, during three days before the Shabbat. A young woman trying to raise three children, work from home, and observe the strict Moroccan traditions of her family finds herself at constant odds with her husband and her brothers, who want her to stay married and leave behind the notions of being loved and free.

The year 2000 approaches in Jerusalem's Orthodox Mea Shearim quarter, where the women work, keep house, and have children so the men can study the Torah and the Talmud. Rivka is happily and passionately married to Meir, but they remain childless. The yeshiva's rabbi, who is Meir's father, wants Meir to divorce Rivka: "a barren woman is no woman." Rivka's sister, Malka, is in love with Yakov, a Jew shunned by the yeshiva as too secular. The rabbi arranges Malka's marriage to Yossef, whose agitation when fulfilling religious duties approaches the grotesque. Can the sisters sort out their hearts' desires within this patriarchal world? If not, have they any other options?

In Israel there is neither civil marriage nor civil divorce. Only rabbis can legitimize a marriage or its dissolution. But this dissolution is only possible with full consent from the husband, who in the end has more power than the judges. Viviane Amsalem has been applying for divorce for three years. But her husband Elisha will not agree. His cold intransigence, Viviane's determination to fight for her freedom, and the ambiguous role of the judges shape a procedure in which tragedy vies with absurdity, and everything is brought out for judgment, apart from the initial request.

Rebellious and outgoing Smadar can't stand types like Mirit. Mirit, introverted and frightened, keeps away from the likes of Smadar. But the two are thrown together as they are assigned to a patrol in Jerusalem as part of their compulsory military service. Their job is to stop Palestinian passersby, to ask for their identity cards, and to write down their details on special forms. You don't move from this place, don't sit down, don't smoke, don't eat, don't talk on your cell phones, says their commander, leaving them alone on the street with their patrol forms. What will they do now? This is the story of two 18-year-old girls who are busy with their own worlds--falling in love, break-ups, and the volatile relationship between the two--in an attempt to ignore the political reality in a city that slowly makes its way into their lives. As women, this film is our own way of soul searching, about our army service and the occupation

Two rebellious young women - one fleeing the chaos of secular hedonism for the disciplined comforts of faith; the other desperate to transcend her oppressive religious upbringing for sexual and spiritual freedom-cross paths unexpectedly in Jerusalem, to startling consequences.