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SUNDAY JULY 13 – MONDAY JULY 14, 2014
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Gafny plans kibbutz scares
Fig Tree wins Lab prize
BY MELANIE GOODFELLOW
BY MELANIE GOODFELLOW
Genre specialist Eitan Gafny, director of Israeli zombie film Cannon Fodder, is gearing up to shoot a kibbutz horror picture set on the eve of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. “It’s a cross-genre film inspired by some of the biggest US horror films of the 1970s, like Halloween and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre… some people might see it as a slasher film, others as a psychological thriller,” says Gafny. The film, entitled Children Of The Fall, revolves around young US woman, Rachel, who is working as a volunteer on a kibbutz in the lead-up to the war, in which Syria and Egypt launched a surprise attack on Israel on the Jewish holy day. She is treated with suspicion by the local kibbutz members, and on the night of Yom Kippur, things take a menacing and bloody turn as Rachel has to fight for her life. Gafny is producing the film, due to shoot in September, through White Beach Productions, the company he set up with wife and actress Yafit Shalev and cinematographer Tom Goldwasser. Yoram Globus’s Globus Group Films is also attached to the project. International sales on Gafny’s debut production Cannon Fodder were picked up by New York-based Screen Media, which repackaged the film under the title Battle Of The Undead. The director will present the project at Pitch Point on Monday.
Ethiopian-born, Israeli film-maker Alamork Marsha’s Fig Tree, based on her experiences as a child in war-torn Addis Ababa in 1991, has won the $50,000 top prize at the pitching event of the Sam Spiegel school’s Jerusalem International Film Lab. The second prize of $20,000 went to Montenegro director Ivan Marinovic’s The Black Pin, about a priest who finds himself at odds with the other inhabitants of his rural parish when he opposes a large property sale.
Israeli directors Amikam Kovner and Assaf Snir won the third $10,000 prize for their debut feature Echoes, about a man trying to decode his relationship with his cheating wife, following her death. French distributor and producer Michele Halberstadt of ARP Selection, who presided over the jury, said: “We were deeply impressed by the high level of all the scripts and presentations, and have chosen to award the prizes to passionate director-writers with a special urgency, a unique voice, originality and artistic courage.”
Nir Shaanani
Sister and brother film-making team Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz greet festival founder Lia van Leer ahead of the festival’s screening of Gett: The Trial Of Viviane Amsalem. Dozens of cast and crew members attended the sell-out screening on Friday night at the Cinematheque.
Talya Lavie, director of local boxoffice hit Zero Motivation, is developing comedy The Current Love Of My Life, a contemporary adaptation of a story by author Sholem Aleichem, whose work also inspired Fiddler On The Roof. Lavie unveiled the film at the final script development pitching session at Jerusalem International Film Lab on Friday. In her contemporary retelling, penniless Israeli musician Bini,
David Broza
NEWS Sweet music Famed musician David Broza plans his first feature film » Page 3
FEATURE The big Pitch Leading Israeli film-makers including Dina Zvi-Riklis and Nir Bergman are lining up for Pitch Point » Page 7
PROFILE Girl talk Keren Yedaya talks about her controversial incest story, That Lovely Girl » Page 9
Bergman plans Neta shoot BY ANDREAS WISEMAN
Lavie finds Love in Brooklyn
Talya Lavie
Other members of the jury included Cannes Critics’ Week artistic director Charles Tesson, ARTE France Cinéma deputy CEO Rémi Burah, film-maker Pia Marais, Israel Film Fund executive director Katriel Schory and Manfred Schmid, executive director of German fund Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung (MDM). A total of 12 scripts were developed at the third edition of the sixmonth lab, spearheaded by Renen Schorr, founding director of the Jerusalem-based Sam Spiegel Film & Television School.
TODAY
who is living illegally in New York, is hired by a wealthy ultra-orthodox Jewish family in Brooklyn to teach Hebrew to their youngest son, on the eve of his marriage to a girl from an important religious family in Jerusalem. Bini falls for the girl. Also citing Woody Allen and the play Cyrano De Bergerac as other sources of inspiration, Lavie said: “I want to create an Israeli-Brooklyn comedy that brings together the
Israeli and the Jewish and the secular and religious.” Producer Eitan Mansuri of Tel Aviv-based Spiro Films, who co-produced Ari Folman’s The Congress, is aiming for a mid-2015 shoot. “We’re talking to potential co-producing partners in North America, both in Canada and New York. It depends on financing but most likely we’ll end up doing exteriors in New York and interiors in Canada,” said Mansuri. Melanie Goodfellow
Broken Wings and In Treatment writer-director Nir Bergman is prepping a new feature, Saving Neta, with producers United Channel Movies; and a 13-part TV series for cable channel Yes. Bergman is casting now for feature Saving Neta, about the interaction between five women of different ages and a man called Neta. Bergman and novelist Eran Bar-Gil have adapted the script from the latter’s novel, Iron. Producers for United Channel Movies — who also produced Bergman’s upcoming feature Yona — are Chilik Michaeli, Avraham Pirchi and Tami Leon. Bergman told Screen: “We began writing this feature more than six years ago. I fell in love with the book’s structure. But we started to develop our own themes. It was an adventure. “We’re telling five stories of mother-daughter relationships with the metaphor of the body running through them. “We have decided to shoot the film over one year with five stories taking place on one day in different seasons.” Bergman will be discussing the project here at the festival, where he scooped the best Israeli feature award in 2010 for Intimate Grammar. Simultaneously the writer-director is developing a 13-part TV series called Free for Israeli cable channel Yes. Bergman is co-writing the series, about the rehabilitation of ex-cons, with Israeli TV director Ram Nehari.
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NEWS
Shorts directors eye features By Andreas Wiseman
Netalie Braun
Women’s film fest seeks out new home The artistic director of Israel’s International Women’s Film Festival is hopeful a new home will be found for the event, which has not been renewed this year. The 11th edition was pulled after the festival was told host city Rehovot could no longer back the event. But artistic director Netalie Braun is in discussions with other potential venues for the festival, which has previously spotlighted directors including Jane Campion, Claire Denis, Margarethe Von Trotta, Lucrecia Martel, Sally Potter and Kelly Reichardt. “The festival has made a total change [for] women in Israel,” Braun told Screen. “Now there are many more women filmmakers who help each other. The Israeli film funds weren’t aware of the extent of the problem before. The change is big but it’s not yet 50/50, as we hope it can be.” Braun, whose short Vow will screen at the festival (see lead story, right), praised the Jerusalem programmers for the number of women directors selected for the event. According to organisers, around 30% of the features here are directed by women, with that number rising significantly among Israeli films. “Around one third of the 30-35 features made in Israel this year have been made by women,” said Braun. “That’s a better ratio than last year. “I hope we can get there. One day we might not even need a women’s festival.” Andreas Wiseman
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Directors with shorts at Jerusalem Film Festival are readying an intriguing slate of features, including an ambitious period drama about Judas Iscariot, a documentary omnibus about life in the West Bank and a drama about the gay community in Israel. Directing duo Ehab Tarabieh and Yoav Gross, whose Berlin Golden Bear nominee Smile, And The World Will Smile Back charts the exchange between a Palestinian family (the al-Haddad family are co-directors) and Israeli soldiers, are planning a Life In A Day-style documentary omnibus about the West Bank. As was the case with Smile, participating families will be encouraged to take an active part in the post-production process, with camera training also available. Funding is likely to come from Israeli human-rights organisation B’Tselem.
Ehab Tarabieh
Yoav Gross
Hadas Ayalon
Erez Tadmor
Recent Tel Aviv University graduate Shira Porat, director of short Has Anyone Seen Eyal Nurich?, is on course to renew her collaboration with award-winning actress Hadas Yaron (Fill The Void) for a 40-minute film called Nothing Like Me.
Scheduled to shoot in September, the film will detail a troubled mother-daughter relationship; Porat says it could pave the way for a feature collaboration between the two. Vow writer-director and International Women’s Film Festival
Broza pulls the strings on doc By Wendy Mitchell
Israeli superstar musician David Broza is readying his first major film project. Titled East Jerusalem/ West Jerusalem, it was shot while he made his latest album of the same name. Erez Miller and Henrique Cymerman direct the project, which is produced by Tel Avivbased Gidi Avivi of Vice Versa Films. Financiers include The Marc Rich Foundation, The abc* Foundation and private backers. House of Marley also supports the project. The documentary will have an 80-minute runtime — a 60-minute TV version will also be cut — and is in the final stages of post for launch at an autumn film festival. A late 2014 or early 2015 theatrical release will follow. Broza told Screen here at the festival that the documentary will have a “journalistic” feel. “We put the film in motion to explain the whole project,” he added, noting 100 hours of footage were shot. The music and film project is part of Broza’s push to unite Israelis and Palestinians through
David Broza
art and culture. “I want to be an entertainer but you can inspire people to act,” he said. Broza worked on the album at Said Murad’s studio in east Jerusalem with Israeli, Palestinian and US musicians. Grammy winner Steve Earle produced the sessions; Wyclef Jean co-wrote the title track. Other musicians featured on the project include the Jerusalem Youth Chorus, Palestinian hip-hop duo G-Town, Israeli percussion troupe Mayumana, Israeli musicians Gadi Seri, Yossi Sassi and
Shaanan Street, and PalestinianIsraeli singer Mira Awad. The eight-day recording session also included eight nights of feasts from Israeli and Palestinian chefs, that will also be part of the documentary. “The food, wine and camaraderie brought everybody in,” Broza said. The musician, who is trilingual in Hebrew, Spanish and English, has also brought music classes to refugee camps. He works at camps including Shuafat on the outskirts of Jerusalem.
artistic director Netalie Braun is in development on an ambitious period drama about Judas Iscariot. Hadas Ayalon, director of Israel’s first Student Oscar nominee Paris On The Water, is currently editing a documentary about political theorist Hannah Arendt and readying her own feature doc about the gay scene in Israel from the 1950s-70s, which could spawn a similarly themed fictional feature. Magic Men co-writer and codirector Erez Tadmor, who made short Dear God starring Lior Ashkenazi and Reymond Amsalem with regular collaborator Guy Nattiv, is in post-production on anticipated feature Wounded Land. Ma g i c Me n p ro t a g o n i s t Makram Khoury stars in Wounded Land alongside Yoav Levi, Keren Berger, Tawfeek Barhom, Dvir Benedek and Jamil Khoury in the drama that follows the fallout from a terror attack in Haifa.
Ulrich Seidl joins list of cancellations As political tensions escalate, a number of film festival guests have cancelled their trips to Jerusalem. Austrian director Ulrich Seidl and his collaborator Maria Hofstaetter — who were due to receive a tribute and take part in a public talk — have cancelled their travel plans. Seidl’s films Dog Days and Import/Export will screen as scheduled. Honoree Beki Probst from Berlin’s European Film Market has also cancelled her visit to the festival. Other film-makers who are no longer planning to attend include Ruben Amar and Lola Bessis (Swim Little Fish Swim), Marcelo Gomes (The Man Of The Crowd), Lloyd Handwerker (Famous Nathan), Georges Gachot (O Samba), Johannes Holzhausen (The Great Museum) and Alice Rohrwacher (The Wonders). Wendy Mitchell
July 13-14, 2014 Screen International at Jerusalem 3
Interview Marin Karmitz
A true independent Marin Karmitz, the subject of a retrospective here in Jerusalem, talks to Melanie Goodfellow about his journey from militant film-maker to building MK2, a leading exhibitor, producer and distributor in France
I
n 1947, nine-year-old Marin Karmitz and his family tried to disembark from a ship carrying Jewish refugees from eastern Europe at the Israeli port of Haifa but were repelled by British troops who fired at the ship. “The boat travelled all over the Mediterranean looking for a place to dock. It tried Istanbul, Naples and Haifa, where the British shot at us, which I always thought was curious,” says veteran producer Karmitz. “We were finally allowed to alight in Marseilles. I think it was my parents’ real desire to go to France, especially my mother’s — she spoke good French and was a great admirer of French culture.” Nearly 70 years later and Karmitz is a guest of honour at Jerusalem Film Festival for a retrospective to celebrate the 40th anniversary of his Paris-based production and exhibition company, MK2. Before the Second World War, Karmitz’s family owned a successful pharmaceutical company in the Romanian capital of Bucharest. “We were assimilated, integrated Jews, you could say. I only really discovered Judaism when I was in my 20s,” explains Karmitz, who says he now has deep links with the religion. “My personal story is very mixed up with the films I wanted to direct, produce or distribute. I did it all
within the framework of my understanding of what it means to be Jewish, that we are guests in this world and we should try to leave it in a better state than when we arrived.” Karmitz opened his first cinema in Paris in 1974 out of necessity. Two years earlier he had directed the militant film Blow For Blow (Coup Pour Coup) about a group of female textile workers who ignore union advice and take their factory boss hostage in protest over sweatshop conditions. The docu-drama, featuring some reallife textile workers, did not win Karmitz many friends in post-1968 France. “It shocked both the establishment and the unions, the latter were used to being the interlocutors between the workers and the bosses but after 1968 a lot of workers didn’t want them any more,” says Karmitz. “The film showed this and they didn’t like it.” Acting independently Blow For Blow was shut out of France’s mainstream circuits and Karmitz was blacklisted. He toured the film himself, screening it in makeshift venues across France. It was this experience that convinced Karmitz he should open an independent cinema to show the sort of anti-establish-
Marin Karmitz on the 1969 shoot of Camarades
4 Screen International at Jerusalem July 13-14, 2014
‘Sometimes you have to fight against mediocrity and banality’ Marin Karmitz, MK2
ment films he was making at the time. Fittingly, he found a small venue just off French Revolution landmark Place de la Bastille in Paris, which he renamed the Le 14-Juillet Bastille. Karmitz’s socialist convictions fed into how he set up and ran the venue. “I wanted it to be a space in which cinema would act as a platform for other forms of creation such as painting, music and photography. We held debates and even installed a small library and exhibition space,” says Karmitz. It was the beginning of a model that remains at the heart of the MK2 ethos and has since been emulated by countless other cinema chains. “I was convinced a cinema and the way it was used as a space could change a neighbourhood,” continues Karmitz. He finally tested this theory with the opening of MK2 Le Quai de Seine multi-
plex close to Place de la Bataille-de-Stalingrad in north-east Paris in 1996. At the time it was an impoverished area known as the drugs supermarket of the French capital. But the beautiful old venue was situated in a refurbished building designed by Gustave Eiffel and quickly became a catalyst for change. The past 15 years has seen the rapidly gentrifying area undergo an extensive urban renewal programme. The cinema itself has become a textbook example of exactly what Karmitz was dreaming of when he took over the tiny Le 14-Juillet Bastille in 1974: the 12-screen Le Quai de Seine’s programme combines mainstream blockbuster fare with arthouse titles as well as special events around niche sectors such as children’s films and documentaries. It also boasts a cinema-focused book and DVD shop as well as a restaurant and café. It welcomed 1.2 million spectators in 2012 and it was joined by a similar venue, MK2 Bibliotheque, in 2003. Strong showing Four decades on from the opening of Le 14-Juillet Bastille, MK2 is now the third biggest exhibition circuit in France, controlling 11 cinemas with 65 screens in Paris as well as four smaller high-end cinemas available for private hire. And the
MK2 Le Quai de Seine cinema
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(Clockwise from left) Marin Karmitz with film-makers Claude Chabrol, Krzysztof Kieslowski and Alain Resnais
Au Revoir Les Enfants
company recently made its first foray outside of France with the acquisition of Cinesur, Spain’s third biggest chain. As well as building the MK2 circuit, Karmitz is known internationally as one of France’s most prolific arthouse producers. Abbas Kiarostami, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Jean-Luc Godard, the Taviani brothers, Michael Haneke, Claude Chabrol, Hiner Saleem and Raphael Nadjari are just some of the 50-plus film-makers for whom Karmitz has produced. “I’ve always seen my role as making visible what was invisible. It’s a complicated process,” he says, citing Louis Malle’s Au Revoir Les Enfants, Jean-Luc Godard’s Every Man For Himself (Sauve Qui Peut) and Claude Chabrol’s Poulet Au Vinaigre as films that may not have made it to the big screen without his support. “These are films that were refused by everyone but went on to be hits,” Karmitz
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Three Colours: Blue
says. “Sometimes you have to fight against mediocrity and banality and not get too comfortable. It’s that which kills creativity.” A colourful collaborator One of Karmitz’s most creative collaborations was with the late Kieslowski, whose Three Colours trilogy Karmitz produced. “I put the same amount of energy and emotional charge into every film I produce,” Karmitz says. “It’s the human relationships, the adventures I have with the directors that have been important. I had a strong relationship with Kieslowski — I didn’t feel like producing any more after he died — and more recently with Kiarostami these last 10 years.” In 2005, Karmitz handed over control of the day-to-day running of his company to sons Nathanael and Elisha. Nathanael is CEO while Elisha is the head of MK2
MK2’s Cinema Paradiso event in the Grand Palais, Paris
Agency, which specialises in events, consulting, publishing and advertising. “The boys are both passionate about the business and capable. If that had not been the case, I would have sold up,” says Karmitz. “We learn a lot from one another. I try to teach them everything that I’ve learned over the years but they teach me a lot of new stuff too.” He cites MK2’s Cinema Paradiso event in June 2013 — held in the Grand Palais exhibition space at the end of the Champs Elysées in Paris and which was masterminded by Elisha — as something he would never have been capable of pulling off. The drive-in themed operation featuring screenings, dance nights, champagne soirées and restaurants drew some 80,000 people over 10 days. “I was over in America recently and people who had seen it or read about it were blown away by the concept,” says Karmitz.
In February 2013, the company closed down its distribution division and signed a servicing deal with Diaphana Films. It also announced it was pulling out of production following the disappointing boxoffice performance of films including On The Road and Like Someone In Love. Karmitz says the company will get back into production but in a different way. The international sales operation remains strong. “At the time, we were losing our identity, producing and acquiring too many films just to feed the distribution machine,” he says. “We decided to stop everything in order to return to basics. We will continue to support directors that we like — either through taking on international sales, co-producing or backing in some way — but in a more focused, elitist way. We’ve gone back to s our roots.” n
July 13-14, 2014 Screen International at Jerusalem 5
The Rabinovich Foundation – Cinema Project congratulates the 31st Jerusalem Film Festival and wishes success to the films that were supported by The Rabinovich Foundation
Full Length Feature Films:
Dramas (Short Films):
Princess
Close Your Eyes Director: Rafael Balulu Producer: Rafael Balulu
Director: Tali Shalom Ezer Producers: Elad Gavish, Moshe Edri, Leon Edri
Vow
That Lovely Girl
Director: Netalie Braun Producer: Ronen Sagih
Director: Keren Yedaya Producers: Marek Rozenbaum, Michael Rozenbaum Jérôme Bleitrach, Emmanuel Agneray, Michael Eckelt
Student Graduation Films:
The Kindergarten Teacher
A Trip to the Other Planet
Director: Nadav Lapid Producers: Talia Kleinhendler, Osnat Handelsman Keren Carole Scotta
Director: Tom Kless Film School: Sapir Academic College
Death and the Maiden Director: Yael Lotem Film School: Tel Aviv University
Documentaries: Night Will Fall Director: André Singer Producers: Sally Angel, Brett Ratner, Philippa Kowarsky
Load Director: Robert Moreno, Niv Shpigel Film School: Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem
Paris on the Water
The Go Go Boys
Director: Hadas Ayalon Film School: Tel Aviv University
Director: Hila Madalia Producers: Yariv Horowitz, Roy Lev
Slope Park
The Polgar Variant Director: Yossi Aviram Producers: Ayelet Kait, Amir Harel
There and Here Director: Avida Livny Producers: Liora Landau, Renana Levi
26 YEARS 939 FILMS
Director: Dudi Dorham Film School: Sam Spiegel Film & Television School, Jerusalem
The Visit Director: Inbar Horesh Film School: Minshar for Art
In association with the Leon Recanati Foundation With the support of:
Israel Ministry Of Culture & Sport - The Israel Film Council The Rabinovich Foundation 90 Ha’Hashmonaim St. Tel Aviv 6120301, Israel Tel: 972-3-5255020, Fax: 972-3-5255130 e-mail: info@cinemaproject.org.il www.cinemaproject.org.il
feature Pitch Point
Nir Shaanani
Alon Gur Arye
Pitch Point 2013
Nir Bergman
The power of the pitch Leading Israeli directors including Dina Zvi-Riklis, Nina Menkes, Alon Gur Arye and Nir Bergman are among the film-makers presenting feature projects at Jerusalem Pitch Point on Monday. By Melanie Goodfellow
T
he three-day Jerusalem Pitch Point meeting, aimed at matching international partners to Israeli films, is a key date on the calendar for the local film industry. “Events like this are crucial for the local industry,” says Katriel Schory, executive director of Israel Film Fund, which co-organises Pitch Point with Jerusalem Film Festival. “Roughly 30% of all finance in Israeli productions comes through co-production. Since 2001, there have been 50 co-productions with France and another 33 with Germany and nine with Poland.” Some 11 projects will be presented to an international jury of experts. A further 10-15 professionals from Europe and the US are expected to attend the meeting, which is also open to the general public. Past participants suggest Pitch Point is an invaluable experience, even when it does not result directly in an international partner. Shira Geffen, who presented Self Made in 2012, says it helped clarify her
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ideas. “Writing a script is a lonely process,” she says. “Pitch Point was the first time I’d communicated my idea to a lot of people and it helped me understand what the film was about.” The black comedy, about two Israeli and Palestinian women, made its international debut at Cannes Critics’ Week in May and is now being showcased in Jerusalem Film Festival’s Israeli feature competition. Also in competition is Efrat Corem’s family drama Ben Zaken, which was presented at last year’s Pitch Point and won the Van Leer Award. Success stories Pitch Point has an illustrious track record. Previous participants include Talya Lavie’s black comedy Zero Motivation, about a group of bored female soldiers, which went on to win the best narrative feature at Tribeca Film Festival this year; Nadav Lapid’s Policeman, which took the special jury prize at Locarno in 2011 before touring the festival circuit; Rama Burshtein’s Orthodox Jewish family tragedy Fill The Void, which was picked up by Sony Pictures
Classics for the US after showing at Venice and Toronto in 2012, and Samuel Maoz’s Lebanon, about a lone Israeli platoon operating over the border during the 1982 Lebanon War, which won Venice’s Golden Lion in 2009.
“Lebanon was a particularly moving, emotional pitch,” recalls Schory. “It was Samuel’s first film but his passion was evident. Afterwards Michel Reilhac, who was head of ARTE Cinema at the s time, jumped up and said, ‘I’m in.’” n
pitch point 2014: the highlights The 11 projects being presented this year include Eitan Gafny’s Children Of The Fall, his second feature following zombie thriller Cannon Fodder (aka Battle Of The Undead), and Alon Gur Arye’s The Naked Gun-style comedy Mossad. Celebrated avant-garde director Nina Menkes will present her next production Minotaur, a retelling of the ancient Greek myth set in the labyrinths of Jerusalem’s Old City. Established film-maker Dina Zvi-Riklis is bringing Poppies In October inspired by the life of the tragic poet Tirza Atar, the daughter of famous Israeli writer and poet Nathan Alterman. Zvi-Riklis’s husband, Eran Riklis, is producing alongside Yifat Prestelnik.
Nir Bergman is presenting Saving Neta, which was selected for the Berlinale Co-production Market earlier this year. Nony Geffen is unveiling Why Elephant, his second feature project after Not In Tel Aviv, which won the special jury prize in Locarno in 2012. For the first time this year, Pitch Point is also organising closed work-inprogress screenings for five films. They include Elad Keidan’s Of Our Economic Situation about a chance meeting between a teacher and a former pupil on the 1,000 Stairs connecting the upper and lower parts of the port city of Haifa. It was showcased at the Cannes Atelier in 2011. Keidan’s Anthem won Cannes’ Cinefondation prize in 2008.
July 13-14, 2014 Screen International at Jerusalem 7
is proud to present:
Our films at the Jerusalem Film Festival
Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi
LINA MANGIACAPRE AWARD: VENICE FF
THE DECENT ONE
Directed by
Vanessa Lapa
16.7 21:00
BERLINALE 2014
UKRAINE IS NOT A BROTHEL
Directed by
Kitty Green
CATHEDRALS OF CULTURE
Directed by Wim Wenders, Michael Glawogger, Michael Madsen, Robert Redford, Margreth Olin and Karim Ainouz
17.7 19:00 | 18.7 10:00
André Singer
Directed by
16.7 14:30 | 17.7 19:15
Directed by
THE 50 YEAR ARGUMENT
BERLINALE 2014
AUDIENCE AWARD: SXSW 2014
14.7 19:30 | 17.7 18:15
NIGHT WILL FALL
15.7 18:30 | 19.7 15:30
SHEFFIELD DOC FEST
VESSEL
Directed by
Diana Whitten
16.7 20:45 | 17.7 12:30
HONORABLE MENTION: SHEFFIELD DOC FEST
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UCM presents the Closing Film of the JerUSAleM FilM FeStivAl 2014
Dancing Arabs
Directed by eran riklis Written by Sayed Kashua United Channels Movies (UCM) is a leading production company in Israel. UCM’S goal is to create feature films telling local stories for a broad international audience. UCM maintains long established relationships with its international partners and supporters.
Yona
Atomic Falafel
Coming Soon…
In Post Production
by Nir Bergman Co-production: Israel/Germany
by Dror Shaul Co-production: Israel/New Zealand/ Germany
United Channels Movies | Yigal Alon 76, Tel Aviv, Israel Tel: +972-3-627-6200 | Fax:+972-3-627-6202 | www.ucm-film.com | info@ucm-film.com
Profiles
Reviews, page 10
Keren Yedaya That Lovely Girl says. “Victims of incest are ashamed because they often still love their parents and so think it’s their fault. In my film I’m speaking about this love, this taboo.” The warm and funny Yedaya laughs when recalling the reaction to her film in Cannes. She says she loves to hear from the critics. “As a director I have a dialogue with them,” she explains. “Of course I ask myself, ‘Did I do my best? Maybe I need to start it differently? Did I miss a point?’ But the answer is — for me, for this subject — that this is the way to handle it.”
By Louise Tutt
It would be an understatement to say reviewers are finding Keren Yedaya’s That Lovely Girl a challenging watch. “Bleak and dour”, “gut-wrenching”, and “punishing” were some of the more positive adjectives used to describe the film when it made its debut in Un Certain Regard at Cannes in May. But Yedaya is unperturbed by the response to her third feature, following the Camera d’Or-winning Or (2004) and Jaffa (2009). That Lovely Girl is an unblinking and clear-eyed drama about the incestuous relationship between a young woman and her father, starring Maayan Turjeman and Tzahi Grad. “What interests me is to have the courage to put out there all the questions that people and society do not know how to handle,” Yedaya says. “I wanted to speak about incest. What it is, what it looks like, how it makes you feel, what it makes of your thoughts and what it does to your body. Of course it’s horrible to see a father raping his daughter for an hour and a half, and she is cutting herself and
Keren Yedaya
blaming herself. I’m not surprised by the reaction at all.” Yedaya is a passionate advocate for the rights of women and children in Israel and around the world. Her aim is for That Lovely Girl to ignite a public debate about incest and ultimately to bring about social change with the introduction of a law to provide more help to struggling parents of young children. “I want us to talk about what we can learn about incest from the film and what we can do about it as a society,” she
That Lovely Girl
Nadav Lapid The Kindergarten Teacher By Andreas Wiseman
Nadav Lapid’s sophomore feature The Kindergarten Teacher, a 2014 Cannes Critics’ Week selection, follows a kindergarten teacher who discovers in a fiveyear-old child a prodigious gift for poetry. Inspired by the boy, she decides to protect his talent in spite of criticism and disapproval from others. The topic marks a significant deviation from Lapid’s acclaimed debut, Policeman, which was about a member of an Israeli anti-terrorist unit who clashes with a group of young radicals. Inspiration for the new story initially came from the 38-year-old writer-director’s own childhood: “There are autobiographical roots to the film. The poems in the film are the same poems I recited as a kid between the ages of four and six-anda-half. Then when I was six-and-a-half, I quit. I never wrote another poem in my life. But I think I was fascinated by the complicated relationship between poetry or art and our wider world.”
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Nadav Lapid
The Kindergarten Teacher
While Lapid’s subject matter and focus has shifted on his second film, his intensity and moral seriousness remain: “In Policeman, there was a question over who the good guys and bad guys are. Some people feel closer to one group, others to the other group. Likewise, when we showed The Kindergarten Teacher at Cannes I was surprised by the variety of responses to the lead character’s actions.” Another constant is his continued
work with his mother, film editor Era Lapid. Is it an easy collaboration? “Getting to the essence of things is, in a way, easier with somebody who already knows you in an intimate way. From time to time it can complicate things, for sure, but in a good way. It’s not always so easy to have the final say when you’re working with your mother, but I think that adds to the nuance of the piece.” Next up Lapid will change tack again with his first French-language film, an “existentialist comedy” about an Israeli man in Paris, which he hopes to shoot next year. It, too, will draw on personal experience to an extent after Lapid spent time in France while developing Policeman at Cannes’ Cinefondation Residence. “I’m very excited about the challenge of filming in Paris and putting my own look to a city that’s been shot before, thousands of times,” he says. The Kindergarten Teacher screens on Tuesday; United King will release in Israel at the end of the year.
July 13-14, 2014 Screen International at Jerusalem 9
REVIEWS
Reviews edited by Mark Adams mark.adams@screendaily.com
Dior And I Reviewed by David D’Arcy
The Immigrant Reviewed by Lee Marshall Scratch the good-looking, emotionally charged surface of James Gray’s period take on the love triangle theme he has already explored in Two Lovers, and you find a rather stagey melodrama with religious overtones. Set in early 1920s New York, this story of a Polish immigrant who is dragged into a demi-monde of prostitution and burlesque by a pimp with a heart of gold moves along briskly enough; but in dramatic terms, we are on the outside looking in, admiring Marion Cotillard’s full-on performance as Ewa, an innocent besmirched. The result is a prestige package that will play to older demographics than Gray’s previous oeuvre, though the burlesque-show theme may rope in a few younger fans of that newly fashionable genre. There is little to fault in terms of production design and costumes. At New York’s historic Ellis Island immigrant-processing centre, conflict-fleeing Polish arrivals Ewa (Cotillard) and her sister Magda fall at the first hurdle, the former rejected because an incident during the crossing has suggested she is a woman of loose morals — a charge she tearfully denies — the latter because she is discovered to have tuberculosis and is consigned to quarantine. But pretty Ewa has been noticed by a well-dressed gent, Bruno (Phoenix), who has the ear of the immigration officials, and she is soon sprung out of the returnee queue and into Bruno’s shabby Lower East Side world. Bruno is a principled pimp, a sort of remixed Fagin, who uses girls like Ewa, fished out of Ellis Island limbo, to service customers and parade semi-naked in grubby burlesque-show pageants in a theatre. Her only consolation is Orlando (Renner), Bruno’s magician cousin, who plays the rootless, mischievous romantic foil to Bruno’s jealous, conflicted anti-hero. The stage is set for an operatic showdown — and Gray obligingly delivers. He offers a well-crafted package but there is surprisingly little contemporary resonance in this immigration melodrama, which is not so much a homeland security tale from the 1920s as a cinematic opera: as pretty as its central character, but in the end, fatally dull.
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Gala
US. 2013. 117mins Director James Gray Production companies Keep Your Head, Kingsgate Films International sales Wild Bunch, www. wildbunch.biz Producers Greg Shapiro, Christopher Woodrow, Anthony Katagas, James Gray Executive producers Agnes Mentre, Vincent Maraval, Brahim Chioua, Molly Conners, Maria Cestone, Sarah Johnson Redlich, Hoyt David Morgan, Bruno Wu, Jacob Pechenik Screenplay James Gray, Richard Menello Cinematography Darius Khondji Editor John Axelrad Production designer Happy Massee Music Chris Spelman Main cast Marion Cotillard, Joaquin Phoenix, Jeremy Renner, Dagmara Dominczyk
The venerable Parisian couture house Christian Dior gets a makeover in Dior And I, which follows a new design director’s rough journey to the runway. The documentary, by cinematographer Frédéric Tcheng (Valentino, Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel), will draw audiences for its rare glimpse behind the scenes in a domain where the public never ventures. Tcheng arrives just as the firm has taken on the Belgian Raf Simons (from the Jil Sander label) as its new design director. Simons, who speaks little French — odd for a Belgian, crazy for the most French of French fashion houses — is a professed minimalist tasked with taking into the future the brand known for sumptuousness and the New Look. There is another presence here — the voice of Christian Dior — read from his memoir in sonorous French. You won’t hear anything unflattering about Dior, certainly not his role in dressing the wives of Nazi occupiers in the Second World War. Also left unmentioned is the anti-Semitic rant by Simons’ predecessor, the extravagant John Galliano, whose ousting as chief designer left a space for the new man. These are major gaps in a film that purports to bring you fashion history. Yet the film’s secret is Dior’s corps in the atelier, prodigious craftspeople and warm-hearted, funny veterans of decades on the shop floor with all the zest of Parisians out of Zola, René Clair or Jean Renoir. The women are loveable character actors in their first movie appearances, and they make the film more than an airbrushed — albeit entertaining — infomercial; you can’t get enough of them. Dior And I has high production values, befitting a doc about couture made by a cinematographer, although footage on the run conveys the rough pandemonium of what leads to beauty on display. Wondrous scenes of the actual making of garments remind you that it is not all about the men at the top.
International documentaries Fr. 2014. 90mins Director/screenplay Frédéric Tcheng Production company CIM Productions International sales Submarine josh@ submarine.com Producers Guillaume de Roquemaurel, Frédéric Tcheng Executive producers Juliette Lambours, Chiara Girardi Cinematography Gilles Piquard, Frédéric Tcheng Editors Julio C Perez IV, Frédéric Tcheng Music Ha-Yang Kim
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Screenings, page 12
Stray Dogs
Masters
Reviewed by Jonathan Romney
I Believe In Unicorns Reviewed by Mark Adams A dreamy and quirkily twisted coming-of-age story, Leah Meyerhoff ’s I Believe In Unicorns may well tread very familiar territory, but it does so in a unique and gently striking style, resulting in an appealing leftfield story of teen relationships, adventure and trauma. Young love is never easy as this tantalising and troubled road-trip romance proves. Writer/director Meyerhoff admits it is a very personal film, and that Natalia Dyer plays a fictionalised version of herself. The premise is a simple — and familiar — one… a young girl runs away from home and into the arms of an older boy, only to discover their life together is not the fantasy she had imagined. Davina (Dyer) is a wilful but gentle teen who has grown up quickly as the sole caretaker of her disabled mother Toni (played by the director’s real-life mother Toni Meyerhoff, who has multiple sclerosis). She often escapes into a twisted fantasy life of underwater fireworks, melting cupcakes and kodachrome dreams (the film blends archival footage with stylised live action and stop-motion animation) plus she collects dolls in glass jars, scratches the emulsion off Polaroid photos and holds her breath constantly. She imagines a unicorn in the woods, and in a fantasy scene that could have been lifted from Ridley Scott’s Legend imagines herself flapping her arms and escaping. Davina looks for salvation in a relationship with an older boy, Sterling (Vack) — your clichéd bad boy who skates, smokes, has long hair and is a wannabe rock star — and while she embraces her burgeoning sexuality and their playful road-trip romp, some disturbing details of his past begin to emerge and his neediness combined with a violent undercurrent conspire to eventually drive her away. I Believe In Unicorns is deftly directed by Leah Meyerhoff, and while never groundbreaking in terms of its slight storyline, it more than makes up for it with the delicate and magical qualities that help transform one young girl’s emotional journey into something rather special.
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Debuts competition US. 2014. 80mins Director/screenplay Leah Meyerhoff Production company Animals On Parade Sales contact Jessica Lacy, info@ unicornsthemovie.com Producer Heather Rae Co-producer Katie Mustard Executive producers Allison Anders, David Kupferberg, Castille Landon Cinematography Jarin Blaschke Editors Michael Taylor, Rebecca Laks Production designer Katherine Rusch Music Sasha Gordon Main cast Natalia Dyer, Peter Vack, Julia Garner, Amy Seimetz, Toni Meyerhoff
Stripped back until it is almost devoid of story, then stripped back some more, Taiwan auteur’s Tsai Mingliang’s latest film — likely to be his last, he has declared — is a meditation on the derelict fringes of urban life. Watching paint dry is an action movie compared to some of the agonisingly slow one-shot or two-shot scenes that Tsai forces his audience to sit through — like the six-minute take of a guy eating a cabbage that his daughter has adopted as a kind of doll. And yet this is still a resonant film, a sort of recessionthemed cinematic tone poem reminiscent of some of the more out-there cinematic forays of Thai film-maker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, that keeps on evolving once the pain of the viewing experience has subsided. Audience reactions will depend largely on whether we are prepared to suppress our desire for narrative coherence, turn off the pretension-ometer, abandon all hope of anything resembling ‘entertainment value’, and simply absorb this radically uncommercial work as one might a piece of video art or a gallery installation. In an almost dialogue-free two-and-a-quarter hour slog, Tsai throws down the gauntlet in the very first scene, a five-minute fixed-camera shot that shows a woman languidly brushing her hair, stopping for a while, and then brushing it some more. We never find out who she is. We spend quite a bit of time thereafter observing two men working as human billboards on the streets of Taipei, holding up placards advertising real-estate developments, braving the wind and rain as traffic thunders past. One of them is eventually picked out: a puffy-faced middle-aged guy (Lee Kang-sheng) who is — we presume — the father of two cute and surprisingly welldressed kids, a young girl (Lee Yi-chieh) and an older boy (Lee Yi-cheng), who we have seen wandering through city parks and streets. Their natural performances — and the sense there is nothing particularly special about life on the streets — do much to ground a film that has few other anchors.
Tai-Fr. 2013. 135mins Director Tsai Ming-liang Production companies Homegreen Films, JBA Production International sales Urban Distribution International, www. urbandistrib.com Producer Vincent Wang Co-producers Jacques Bidou, Marianne Dumoulin Screenplay Tung Cheng Yu, Tsai Ming-liang, Peng Fei Cinematography Liao Pen-jung, Sung Wen Jhong Editor Lei Zhen Qing Production designer Masa Liu, Tsai Ming-liang Main cast Lee Kangsheng, Yang Kuei-mei, Lu Yi-ching, Chen Shiangchyi, Lee Yi-cheng, Lee Yi-chieh, Wu Jin-kai
July 13-14, 2014 Screen International at Jerusalem 11 n
Screenings
» Screening times and venues are correct at the time of going to press
Edited by Paul Lindsell paullindsell@gmail.com
renowned violinist Marcel is dining at his friend Pierre and wife Romine’s house. During dinner he shares with them a love affair that ended in tears. The broken-hearted man captures Romine’s heart, and a romantic triangle ensues, bringing quite a few twists and crises in tow.
Sunday July 13 09:30 Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return
(US) Globus Group, Neve Ilan. 88min. Dir: Will Finn, Dan St Pierre. Key voicce cast: Roni Dalumi, Tzvika Furman, Noa Kashpitzki. Tireless Dorothy returns to the Land of Oz to save her friends Scarecrow, Lion and Tin Man from Jester, the villain who threatens to turn them into marionettes. On the way, she encounters Wiser the owl, China Princess and Marshal Mallow — who help her to return order and happiness to Emerald City. JFF Kids Cinematheque1
09:45 40 Days of Silence
(France, Germany, Netherlands, Uzbekistan) Pascale Ramonda, Paris. 88min. Dir: Saodat Ismailova. Key cast: Rushana Sadikova, Saodat Rahimova, Farida Olimovava. Carte Blanche Cinematheque2
10:00 Israeli Short Film Competition — Program 2 The Van Leer Awards for Israeli Cinema — Short Film Cinematheque3
11:30 Difret
(US, Ethiopia) Films Boutique, Berlin. 99min. Dir: Zeresenay Berhane Mehari. Key cast: Meron Getnet, Tizita Hagere, Rahel Teshome. Fourteen-year-old Hirut is abducted for marriage on the way home from school in a small village in the heart of Ethiopia. After she is raped, she manages to flee, shooting her captor in self-defense and killing him. All of the people in the area demand that she be executed and police representatives in the region make halfhearted efforts to grant her fair treatment until
JFF Special Cinematheque2
13:45 Friends from France
Sunday July 13 12:30 Red Leaves
(Israel) Daroma Productions, Moshav Kokhav Michael. 80min. Dir: Bazi Gete. Key cast: Hanna Haiela, Meir Desse, Solomon Mersha. Meseganio Tadela, 74, is a hard, obstinate and nervous man. He emigrated to Israel from Ethiopia 28 years ago with his family. He has chosen to zealously retain his culture, talks very little and hardly speaks Hebrew. After losing his wife, he is the awaited verdict. Enter Meaza, a lawyer who established an organisation that provides legal assistance to women, and fights with all her might for the rights and liberty of Hirot. In the Spirit of Freedom in Memory of Wim van Leer Lev Smadar
Letter to a Father+You Will Find Me
(Argentina) Doc & Film, Paris. 65min. Dir: Edgardo Cozarinsky. How does one write a letter to a father who is long gone? How does one recreate the memories and answer all of the unanswered questions?
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afraid of dying and being alone. Meseganio sets out on a journey that leads him through his children’s homes. He comes to realise that he belongs to a rapidly disappearing class that believes in retaining Ethiopian culture. The harsh reality hits him in the face. Having come to know some of life’s new realities, he tries to survive according to his own ways. The Haggiag Awards for Israeli Cinema — Full Length Films Cinematheque3
Why do we save things that are meant to disappear? These are a few among the questions that Edgardo Cozarinsky sets out to explore in this deeply personal essay about the father he never really knew. The result is a profound meditation on the meaning of emigration, Jewishness, displacement, the new world versus the European old country, family, memory and loss. The Jewish Experience Cinematheque2
Swim Little Fish Swim
(US, France) Jour2Fete, Paris. 95min. Dir: Ruben Amar, Lola Bessis. Key
cast: Dustin Guy Deffa, Lola Bessis, Brooke Bloom. Twenty-something Leeward is married, has a daughter and lives in New York. He is also Jewish and has a set of overbearing parents… at least his grandmother is kind and understanding. He wants to make music but is unemployed and his wife, who works as a hospital nurse, is pushing him to finally do something productive with his life. Into the problematic relationship steps Lilas, a beautiful French artist who needs a place to stay. Lilas, who grew up overshadowed by a successful artist for a mother, has doubts about her own life and understands Leeward’s desire to realise himself and the artist within. Gala Cinematheque1
11:45 Life Itself
(US) Magnolia Pictures, New York. 118min. Dir: Steve James. Key cast: with Roger Ebert, Richard Corliss, Werner Herzog, Errol Morris, Martin Scorsese, AO Scott. Last year we lost Roger Ebert, considered by many to be the best known and most influential
American film critic of our generation. It was only a matter of time before a film would take up the task of documenting the fascinating figure who deeply influenced film culture in America and beyond its borders. Distinguished documentary director Steve James and executive producers Martin Scorsese and Steven Zaillian present a documentary film that recounts Ebert’s journey, from his start as a young journalist with a political agenda, through his many years of work as film critic for the “Chicago Sun-Times” (which earned him a Pulitzer Prize), his transformation to a TV icon in his long-running “At The Movies”, and his establishment as one of the key voices in online film criticism, when jaw cancer took his ability to speak. Cinemania Cinematheque4
12:30 Red Leaves See box, above
13:00 Melo
(France) MK2, Paris. 112min. Dir: Alain Resnais. Key cast: Sabine Azema, Fanny Ardant, Pierre Arditi. Just returned from a concert tour, world-
(France, Germany, Russia, Canada) Pyramide, Paris. 100min. Dir: Anne Weil, Philippe Kotlarski. Key cast: Soko, Jeremie Lippmann, Vladimir Fridman. First cousins Carole and Jerome are posing as newlyweds on a group tour to Odessa. It is 1979 and the Soviet Union is on the brink of the Cold War. Their real aim is to make contact with RussianJewish Refuseniks in need of assistance. By day, Carole and Jerome visit the tourist sites; by night, they sneak away to public phone booths and whisper the code phrase: “Hello, we are friends from France.” Carole is entirely devoted to her political cause; Jerome couldn’t care less about their mission and just wishes that Carole would show more interest in him. And the meetings with the Refuseniks? Well, let’s just say they are not exactly what the idealistic cousins expect. The Jewish Experience Lev Smadar
Oldboy
(South Korea) Moho Films, Seoul. 120min. Dir: Park Chan-wook. Key cast: Choi Min-sik, Yoo Ji-tae, Kang Hyejung. One night, Oh Dae-su is kidnapped. He finds himself locked in a hotel room, where he will spend the next 15 years in solitary confinement, his only connection to the outside world being through TV news reports. When he was
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imprisoned, South Korea was under military rule and undergoing rapid development. When he gets out, Korea is not only democratic but one of the most developed and modern countries in the world. He has no idea who his captor was and why he was imprisoned, and now he is hell-bent on finding the man who ruined his life, and taking revenge. JFF Special Cinematheque1
14:00 Because I Was a Painter
(France, Germany) Jour2fete, Paris. 104min. Dir: Christophe Cognet. Key cast: with: Yehuda Bacon, Jose Frosty, Walter Spitzer. One does not usually associate the Nazi camps with artistic inspiration or sublimation. “Because I Was A Painter” sets out to show how artists living in the camps during the Holocaust created artworks both to escape their misery and record their experiences for generations to come. This is a film about traumatic experience and bearing witness, but this is also a film that offers an uncompromising look at the notion of artwork and questions our perception of beauty and aesthetics.
Sunday July 13 16:00 Mr leos caraX
(France) Films Distribution, Paris. 72min. Dir: Tessa Louise-Salome. Key cast: with: Gilles Jacob, Harmony Korine, Denis Lavant. In his home country, France, film-maker Leos Carax is seen as a mystery, a loner who shuns the media and the general public. Outside of France, however, his works are appreciated above his public persona, and even though he
has completed only five feature-length films in his 30 years of filmmaking, his phenomenal artistic achievements have earned him a place of honour in the international film pantheon. This documentary film tries to crack the mystery of the complex artist who has long since become a cult, while drawing the viewer into the poetic and fantastic world of his films. Cinemania Cinematheque4
The Jewish Experience Cinematheque4
14:30 Things People Do
(US) Pascale Ramonda, Paris; Celluloid Dreams, Paris. 110min. Dir: Saar Klein. Key cast: Wes Bentley, Vinessa Shaw, Jason Isaacs. Bill is the American we’ve met a hundred times: working for an insurance company, living a peaceful home life, a married father of two. But it turns out that he has recently lost his job and has not told his family. Coincidentally, he begins a career as a burglar. After his first theft succeeds, he decides to improve his technique and even begins to enjoy it. At the same time, he
becomes friendly with an unusual character, Frank, a former detective with a drinking problem who seeks to restore his former glory. What will happen when Bill finds out that his friend is a dangerous thief ? Debuts Competition Cinematheque3
15:00 The Dirties
(Canada) Ellipsis Media International, Rome. 83min. Dir: Matt Johnson. Key cast: Matt Johnson, Owen Williams, Krista Madison. Matt and Owen, highschool film majors, decide to make a film in which they play a pair of
avengers who take revenge on “The Dirties” — the name they’ve given to a gang of bullies at their school. When people make fun of the film, Matt decides to shoot it again. But then a girl starts showing interest in Owen, changing the dynamic between the two buddies and threatening not only the shooting of the film but their entire friendship. Debuts Competition Cinema City 11
15:45 German Concentration Camps Factual Survey
(UK) IWM (Imperial War Museums). 72min. Prod: Sidney L Bernstein. When bringing the
German-occupied territories of Europe and finally Germany itself under their control in 1944 and 1945, the Allied forces didn’t only have military liberation on their mind. They also knew they had to put an end to the spectre of Nazism by way of propaganda. Russians, Americans, and British camera teams and photographers arrived with no idea of the atrocities they would capture on film. When British troops liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in April 1945, the cameras of the the cameras of the British Army Film and Photographic Unit documented in detail what they found there. Among the more than 10,000 dead and 15,000 dying, they carried out the hardest job of their lives. Their footage, along with that shot by Soviet and American cameramen, was compiled for a film to be produced the same year to confront the Germans with their guilt. In the end, it turned out differently. Even Alfred Hitchcock’s involvement was unable to prevent this ambitious work from being shelved, unfinished in the autumn of 1945. A fragment entitled “Memory Of The
Camps” was presented at the Berlinale Forum in 1984 and shown on US television a year later. This milestone in documentary film has been restored and completed and can now finally be viewed in its intended form. JFF Special Cinematheque2
16:00 Mr leos caraX See box, left
16:15 I Believe in Unicorns
(US) ICM Partners, Los Angeles. 80min. Dir: Leah Meyerhoff. Key cast: Natalia Dyer, Peter Vack, Julia Garner. Beautiful, fantasyprone teenager Davina spends most of her free time taking care of her wheelchair-bound mother. Not finding her Prince Charming, she falls under the charms of the broodingly attractive Sterling, who plays games yet causes her to fall madly in love with him. Davina is drawn into a whirlwind of romance and adventure, and proposes to Sterling that they go on a road trip that will take them far from their small town. As they head on their way everything goes fine, more or less, but the enchantment of her new relationship quickly fades
when Sterling’s volatile side begins to emerge. Debuts Competition Lev Smadar
Import/Export
(Austria, France, Germany) Coproduction Office, Paris. 136min. Dir: Ulrich Seidl. Key cast: Ekateryna Rak, Paul Hofmann, Michael Thomas. Olga, a single mother in the Ukraine, barely makes ends meet in her job as a nurse, and the extra change she earns through virtual sex doesn’t help much. She decides to try her luck in Austria, where she finds work as a cleaner in a geriatric ward, but for a foreign worker with no citizenship, it’s not exactly easy to survive. Paul, a young Austrian living a marginal existence seeking refuge from his debts, goes with his step-father to try his luck in Eastern Europe. The two find themselves in the heart of Ukraine and discover a world of alcohol and showgirls. JFF Special Cinematheque1
17:00 Intrepido: A Lonely Hero
(Italy) Rai Trade, Rome. 104min. Dir: Gianni Amelio. Key cast: Antonio Albanese, Livia »
July 13-14, 2014 Screen International at Jerusalem 13 n
SCREENINGS
Rossi, Gabriele Rendina. Antonio is middle-aged and divorced, and like most people he wakes up every morning and goes to work. Except that one day he’s a construction worker and the next he’s a cook. He is also driving a tram, delivering pizzas or pasting posters. In short, he makes a living as a “fillin”, going to different jobs for a few hours or a few days, replacing people who are out for some reason or another. One day he meets Lucia, a woman with a pessimistic outlook. He tries to help her but it turns out that there are some jobs that not everyone, and perhaps no one, can do. Masters Cinema City 11
PitBulls Flesh & Blood
(Israel) Buzz Television. 56min. Dir: Tal Michae. Yuval, a former police officer, lives on an isolated farm with 100 pitbull dogs that he has rescued from gambling dog fights, illegal breeding and abuse. At the shelter, he rehabilitates the dogs and finds new homes for some of them. Yuval’s rescue activity is not supported by the authorities and he is forced to finance his endeavours from donations and sales of scraps of iron that he collects in the fields. However, the dog fight organisers are not ready to give up easily on their property and profits. The Van Leer Awards for Israeli Cinema — Documentary Film Cinematheque3
17:30
Singapore, February 9, 1942. The height of the Second World War. A downed Australian fighter pilot wakes up to find himself dangling between heaven and earth, his parachute caught in the treetops. As night falls, he must make his way through the jungle, trying to escape the Japanese forces and find shelter. Debuts Competition Cinematheque2
20:00 Dior and I
Sunday July 13 18:30 Honour thy Father and thy Mother, Damn It!
(Israel) Rahmilevich Production. 58min. Dir: Alexandra Rahmilevich. Ever since they can remember, Dasha (22) and Natasha (21), have felt they never belonged to anyone or any place. The difficult relationship between their parents in Ukraine tore up the family. Without warning, their father decided to take them to
unique is the first-rate academic quality, so rare in the American public university system. But the constant cuts in state funding are threatening the institution. Masters Cinematheque4
At Berkeley
(US) Doc & Film, Paris. 244min. Dir: Frederick Wiseman. What makes UC Berkeley unique? This question is posed at the beginning of Frederick Wiseman’s film, which observes the public university through footage of the classes, student council sessions, and administration meetings, alongside scenes from cultural and sports events at the university, all of which are interspersed with leisurely interludes on the campus lawn. Above all, what makes Berkeley
Patrolman P
(US) Motherlode Films, New York. 91min. Dir: Ido Mizrahy. In 1971, the New York Police Department is mired in corruption. When investigators try and expose it they learn Frank Serpico, their whistleblower, won’t wear a wire. Their luck turns when Bill Phillips, a flamboyant, corrupt detective, is caught taking bribes from an infamous madam, and agrees to go undercover among his own. Phillips becomes
n 14 Screen International at Jerusalem July 13-14, 2014
Israel, along with his new wife. The girls were separated from their mother and her existence hidden from them. Even in Israel they felt like strangers, wandering between boarding schools and foster families. After 16 years, following their father’s death, the girls yearn to be reunited with their mother. The Van Leer Awards for Israeli Cinema — Documentary Film Cinematheque3
a prolific informant, securing the indictments of dozens of cops and shattering the blue wall of silence. The script flips when Phillips is convicted of murder. Phillips claims he’s the victim of a conspiracy. But after three decades behind bars will anyone believe him? Int. Documentaries Cinematheque2
18:30 Honour thy Father and thy Mother, Damn It! See box, above
Tangerines
(Estonia, Georgia ) Cinemavault, Toronto. 87min. Dir: Zaza Urushadze. Key cast: Lembit Ulfsak, Giorgi Nakashidze, Elmo Nuganen. It is 1992. The Abkhazia region wants to separate
from Georgia and war breaks out between the Georgian army and the separatists. Most of the Estonians living in Abkhazia flee the combat region, but Ivo insists on staying behind and helping his neighbour pick the tangerines that have ripened in his orchard. The war reaches them quickly and after some fire exchanges at their doorstep, Ivo takes in two serious casualties: a Georgian and a Chechen. Only their critical condition keeps them from slitting each other’s throats. While the war rages outside, the two sworn enemies recover and are forced to recognise each other’s existence. In the Spirit of Freedom in Memory of Wim van Leer Lev Smadar
19:15 The Immigrant
(US) United King, Ramat Hasharon. 120min. Dir: James Gray. Key cast: Marion Cotillard, Joaquin Phoenix, Jeremy Renner. It is 1921. Ewa, a beautiful young Polish woman, sails with her sister Magda from Europe to the United States in the hope of a better life. At Ellis Island, the authorities suspect Magda of having tuberculosis and quarantine her. On the brink of deportation, the desperate Ewa meets Bruno, a charming man who offers to help her and takes her under his wing. But it soon becomes
clear that Bruno wants something in return; first Ewa is forced to perform in a burlesque show, and the way from there to prostitution is very short. Gala Cinema City 11
19:30 Jack
(Germany) Beta Cinema, Munich. 103min. Dir: Edward Berger. Key cast: Ivo Pietzker, Georg Arms, Luisse Heyer. Jack is only 10 years old, but he is willing to deal with the challenges that life has served him. Jack’s mother is an immature party girl, his father left them long ago, and Jack diligently plays the role of parent for his younger brother as he does his best to keep the family together. When mom disappears from the house for an extended period, Jack heads off with his brother to look for her. The city of Berlin — with its assorted types, side streets, parks and night clubs — is viewed from the point of view of the child embarking on an uncompromising comingof-age journey. Panorama Cinematheque1
19:45 Canopy
(Australia, Singapore) Odin’s Eye Entertainment, Brighton Le Sands. 84min. Dir: Aaron Wilson.
(France) Submarine, New York. 89min. Dir: Frederic Tcheng. In 2012, when the legendary House of Dior announced that Raf Simons would fill the empty seat of artistic director, a few eyebrows were raised. Simons, a Belgian designer who mostly designed men’s clothing and was known as a minimalist, had maintained a low public profile and never stepped into the world of Haute Couture. He was given eight weeks to create his debut collection at Dior — a far cry from the five or six months usually allotted to such a task. “Dior and I” offers a rare peek into the fashion house, and into Simons’ work process — from his first visit to the historical building, his collaboration with the dedicated workers of the Atelier, the search for inspiration, the sewing, the tensions, the obstacles and pressures, and ultimately an ambitious fashion show. Int. Documentaries Cinematheque3
20:45 South is Nothing
(Italy) Doc & Film, Paris. 90min. Dir: Fabio Mollo. Key cast: Miriam Karlkvist, Vinicio Marchioni, Valentina Lodovini. In a small coastal town in southern Italy, a workingclass family tries to survive following the death of their son, Pietro. The widowed father, unable to cope with the loss of his son, does his best to make ends meet at his fish shop, whose existence is threatened by the local
Mafia. Rebellious tomboy Grazia lives in the shadow of her older brother, and is drawn to a young dealer who promises to take her to find him.
vision and to make films.
Debuts Competition
(France, Chile) The Festival Agency, Paris. 130min. Dir: Alejandro Jodorowsky. Key cast: Brontis Jodorowsky, Pamela Flores, Jeremias Herskowits, Alejandro Jodorowsky. The great Jodorowsky returns to the director’s chair for an autobiographical work shot in the Chilean coastal city where he grew up, and presents us with a collection of characters from his family and childhood who contributed to the development of his surrealistic awareness. He combines his personal history with elements of theatre, opera, mythology, and poetry, creating a film that reflects his ultimate motto: objective reality is a construct; reality is no more than a dance created by our imaginations.
Panorama Cinematheque2
11:00 The Dance of Reality
Lev Smadar
21:45 Come to My Voice See box, right
The Skeleton Twins
(US) Sundance, San Francisco, Sydney. 88min. Dir: Craig Johnson. Key cast: Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig, Luke Wilson. Milo and Maggie are estranged twins who live at opposite ends of the country. Disturbing circumstances bring Milo for an extended stay at Lance and Maggie’s house, where the two grew up. Both twins are lost causes: Maggie, who works as a dental hygienist, is forced to deal with her troubled marriage to Lance, who is so nice that he is unbearable; while Milo digs into his past and finds his high-school English teacher, the man with whom he had a scandalous affair. Gala Cinema City 11
22:00
Sunday July 13 21:45 Come to My Voice
(France, Germany, Turkey) EZ Films, Paris. 105min. Dir: Huseyin Karabey. Key cast: Feride Gezer, Melek Ulger, Tuncay Akdemir. An informer tells the Turkish military that the Kurdish underground is hiding weapons in a small village. After a futile raid by the soldiers, the military arrests all the menfolk in the village and says it will release
them only in exchange for the weapons. One of the men arrested is Terno, who leaves behind his young daughter, Ciyan, and the girl’s elderly grandmother. The grandmother will do anything to get Terno released, and when an old rifle doesn’t do the trick, grandmother and child set out to search of a more modern firearm at the neighbouring village. In the Spirit of Freedom in Memory of Wim van Leer Cinematheque1
Free Range: Ballad on Approving of the World
(Estonia) Homeless Bob, Tallinn. 104min. Dir: Veiko Ounpuu. Key cast: Lauri Lagle, Jaanika Arum, Roman Baskin. Fred is a non-conformist hipster type with a pessimistic attitude. We watch him as he is fired from his newspaper job after publishing an unconventional film review and getting caught using the office photocopier to Xerox a novel he wrote. A short time afterwards his girlfriend Susanna, the daughter of the newspaper’s editor, informs him that she is pregnant and is planning on keeping the baby. He runs away into the arms of an ex-girlfriend, but later returns to Susanna to try to give another go at functioning in the real world. He decides to support his family as a
forklift operator, but it seems that every kind of regular job doesn’t really suit his personality. Panorama Cinematheque2
Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq
(US) Cactus Three, New York. 91min. Dir: Nancy Buirski. Of all the dancers who have left their mark on the history of ballet, Tanaquil Le Clercq (1929-2000) was perhaps the most sublime. Her elongated physique and horse-like grace captivated audiences and choreographers alike. Thanks to her extraordinary movement, weightless elegance, and unique stage personality, Le Clercq became a muse for two of the great choreographers of the 20th century —
George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins. She and Balanchine eventually married, while Robbins made his famous version of “Afternoon Of A Faun” for her. Tanny had it all; love, glory, wealth, the position of prima ballerina of the New York City Ballet. But all this came to a sudden and tragic end when, at age 27, while on tour in Copenhagen, she was stricken with polio and the bottom half of her body became completely paralysed. She would never dance again, and the world of ballet is haunted by her disturbing story to this day. Carte Blanche Cinematheque4
22:15
138min. Dir: Tsai Ming Liang. Key cast: Lee Kang Sheng, Lu Yi Ching, Lee Yi Cheng. A father is trying to take care of his two children, roofless, on the streets of Taipei. The children spend their days in the supermarket, while the father earns some money as a human billboard at a busy intersection. There is also a woman connected to the family, who appears from time to time, each time played by a different actress. The film develops at a slow pace, through long shots, never giving the audience all of the details necessary to create a coherent narrative. But the patient viewer will be rewarded with a thrilling and remarkable encounter with exhilarating images — some disturbing, others heartwarming. Masters Cinematheque3
Monday July 14 09:30 Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return
(US) Globus Group, Neve Ilan. 88min. Dir: Will Finn, Dan St Pierre. Key cast: Voices: Roni Dalumi, Tzvika Furman, Noa Kashpitzki. JFF Kids Cinematheque1
Stray Dogs
Wolfy, the Incredible Secret
(France, Taiwan) Urban Distribution International, Paris.
(France) Films Distribution, Paris. 79min. Dir: Gregoire
Solotareff, Eric Omond. Key cast: Voices: Malik Zidi, Stephane Debac, Anais Demoustier. Wolfy, a mild-mannered vegetarian wolf and his friend Tom, a white rabbit, could have gone on living quietly in the carefree land of rabbits, had Wolfy not discovered that he is not an orphan as he thought, but that his hairy bohemian mother is still alive and howling. The two go to Wolfenberg in search of Wolfy’s mother, where they come upon the colorful Festival of Carnivores. Will their friendship withstand the test of the bubbling cauldron of meat, and what amazing secret will they discover about Wolfy’s birth? JFF Kids Cinematheque3
09:45 Eye Am
(France, Turkey) Iki Film, Istanbul. 78min. Dir: Hakkı Kurtulus, Melik Saracoglu. Key cast: Melik Saracoglu, Bilgin Saracoglu, Ismail Saracoglu. Melik is a film buff with serious vision problems. Now, with both eyes bandaged and uncertain as to whether he will ever see again, he tells his life story — his childhood, his film studies in Lyon, city of the Lumière brothers… But soon enough the film turns to focus on his present struggle to regain his
Masters Lev Smadar
European Film Academy: Short Matters! Cinematheque4
11:30 Famous Nathan
(US) Picture Palace Pictures, New York. 98min. Dir: Lloyd Handwerker. Key cast: with: Nathan Handwerker, Sol Handwerker, Lloyd Handwerker. In the heart of Coney Island is a long-established culinary institution known to every New York hotdog lover. Nathan’s Famous, founded in 1916 by Nathan Handwerker, a penniless Jewish immigrant from Poland, over the years became a prosperous and celebrated American fast-food chain. The founder’s grandson, Lloyd Handwerker, researched, filmed and gathered archival material for 30 years, creating this fascinating documentary about the family business and its employees who have devotedly served millions of customers. Int. Documentaries Cinematheque3
July 13-14, 2014 Screen International at Jerusalem 15 n
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SCREENINGS
Finsterworld
Particle Fever
(Germany) Global Screen, Munich. 91min. Dir: Frauke Finsterwalder. Key cast: Lautaro Delgado, Victoria Almeida, William Prociuk. A police officer who likes wearing a furry bear costume, a young film-maker unable to find a subject for her documentary, a pedicurist in a complicated affair with an older patient, a couple having problems with their German car, high school students on a school trip at a concentration camp and a wild man training a raven in the forest. The characters and stories intersect at various junctures and encounters, all set in the country where everyone is careful to be beautiful, polite, successful and happy. Except that with one small step we discover that beneath this German idyll lies a very dark side.
(US) Roco Films, California. Dir: Mark Levinson. Humankind’s quest to understanding the universe has gone through some major upheavals in recent years. In Switzerland, scientists from all over the world have been running the Large Hadron Collider, trying to reconstruct the Big Bang and to search for the elusive Higgs boson particle, which just might explain how the universe was created — or at least confirm or invalidate various scientific theories. The film follows several scientists involved in the experiment and in the formulation of theories around it, proffering a layman’s explanation of the unique importance of the colossal experiment that many have claimed is a waste of money and some have predicted will spell the destruction of the world.
Debuts Competition Cinematheque2
11:45 Dancing Arabs
(Israel, France, Germany) 105min. Dir: Eran Riklis. Key cast: Tawfeek Barhum, Yael Abecassis, Ali Suliman. Eran Riklis’s new film is an extraordinary screen adaptation of Sayed Kashua’s novels “Dancing Arabs” and “Second Person Singular”, based on the author’s own script. Iyad, an Arab boy from the Arab-Israeli town of Tira, is sent by his parents to a prestigious Jewish boarding school in Jerusalem, where he finds himself struggling with questions of language, culture and identity. He develops a bold friendship with Yonatan, a boy with muscular dystrophy, and falls in love with a Jewish girl named Naomi. The years pass, Israel goes into the shelters under the threat of Saddam Hussein’s Scuds, and Iyad continues to feel like he doesn’t fit in. He realises that in order to be accepted as an equal, in or to allay other people’s suspicions, in order to work, to love and, most of all, to have a sense of
Monday July 14 13:45 Stations of the Cross
(Germany) Beta Cinema, Munich. 107min. Dir: Dietrich Bruggemann. Key cast: Lea van Acken, Franziska Weisz, Florian Stetter. Maria, a teenage girl at a crucial stage in her development, comes from a fundamentalist Catholic family and community. While she lives in the modern world, her heart belongs
belonging, he will have to make personal sacrifices. Examines the complex fabric of relations between Jews and Arabs in Israel, the impact of regional events on the people here and the journey of one young man looking to break out of a life seemingly foretold. Opening Cinematheque1
13:30 Catch Me Daddy
(UK) Altitude, London. 107min. Dir: Daniel Wolfe. Key cast: Sameena Jabeen Ahmed, Conor McCarron. Laila, a teenager with pink hair, has brought shame upon her Pakistani family. She flees her home and lives with her Scottish boyfriend in a trailer on the edge of a town in West Yorkshire. Her father will not forgive her and sends a group of thugs
n 16 Screen International at Jerusalem July 13-14, 2014
to Jesus and she seeks to walk in his footsteps, become a saint and go to heaven. Convinced of the righteousness of her path and believing that it will save her four-year-old brother from his deafness, she adopts the Christian creed unconditionally and walks the 14 Stations of the Cross. Even those closest to her are unable to rescue her from this demanding path. Panorama Cinematheque1
to punish the rebellious girl and her boyfriend. Panorama Lev Smadar
Radical Evil
(Austria, Germany) First Hand Films, Zurich. 96min. Dir: Stefan Ruzowitzky. Key cast: Christopher Browning, Ray Baumeister, Benjamin Ferencz. What mechanisms are set in motion that make a highly civilised culture drift into barbarism? What lies behind the thought process of educated family members who murder women, children, and babies? The perpetrators in question are members of the Nazi death squads — the Einsatzgruppen — who shot about two million Jewish civilians in Eastern Europe during the Second World War. How can
a society overcome its readiness for conformity, obedience and violence? Stefan Ruzowitzky searches for the reasoning behind these actions and takes us on a psychological and intellectual journey into the root of evil. The Jewish Experience Cinematheque4
The Referee
(Argentina, Italy) Le Pacte, Paris. 96min. Dir: Paolo Zucca. Key cast: Stefano Accorsi, Gepy Cucciari, Benito Urgu. Atletico Pabarile, the worst team in the Sardinian Third League, is humbled by Montacristu, the team lead by Brai, a boastful landowner. When young Matzutzi returns home and joins Atletico Pabarile, the team begins to win game after game. Meanwhile, Cruciani, an ambitious referee, gradually climbs to the Champions League and if he figures out how to manoeuver among the corrupt officials, might even run the championship. These two stories sooner or later intertwine. Panorama Cinematheque2
13:45 Israeli Short Film Competition — Program3 The Van Leer Awards for Israeli Cinema — Short Film Cinematheque3
Stations of the Cross See box, above
14:00 Cracks in Concrete
(Austria) Films Boutique, Paris; Austrian Film Commission, Vienna. 105min. Dir: Umut Dag. Key cast: Murathan Muslu, Alechan Tagaev, Magdalena Paulus. Ertan is released from prison after 10 years under lock and key. Welcomed back with open arms by old acquaintances, and rejected by some family members, Ertan still feels pangs of conscience about his past and tries to find his way back into society as an honest citizen. Mikail, his 15-year-old son, unaware of his father’s identity, is trying to launch a career as rapper. He also works as a petty drug dealer and gets into debt. Ertan decides to try and help Mikail without revealing his identity to the boy, but finds himself watching helplessly as his son repeats all the mistakes that he himself made in the past. Panorama Cinema City 11
15:30 Come to My Voice
(France, Germany, Turkey) EZ Films, Paris. 105min. Dir: HuSeyin Karabey. Key cast: Feride Gezer, Melek Ulger, Tuncay Akdemir. In the Spirit of Freedom in Memory of Wim van Leer Cinematheque2
Int. Documentaries Cinematheque4
15:45 Charlie’s Country
(Australia) Visit Films, New York. 108min. Dir: Rolf de Heer. Key cast: David Gulpilil, Peter Djigirr, Luke Ford. Charlie lives in a remote Australian Aborigine community that is gradually losing interest in its native traditions. When the community displays indifference toward one of its own hospitalised members, Charlie seeks out his roots — hunting, wood sculpting, sleeping in the outback. This sense of liberation ends abruptly with a raging fever and in a hospital stay. Upon release, Charlie becomes involved with a group of alcoholic, pot-smoking Aborigines and lands in jail. As the prison barber shaves his hair and beard, he silently parts with his native identity. Carte Blanche Lev Smadar
16:00 A Wolf at the Door
(Brazil) United King, Ramat Hasharon. 100min. Dir: Fernando Coimbra. Key cast: Leandra Leal, Milhem
Cortaz, Fabiula Nascimento. Something terrible happened in Rio de Janeiro: a little girl disappeared. Someone simply took her and left. The police rush to summon the mother, the father and his lover. Roza, the lover, quickly becomes the main suspect and is the most interesting of the protagonists. At first, everything is confused, each presents a different version of what transpired. But as the investigation progresses, the events become clearer and the tension nearly breaks. Then, suddenly, surprising twists in the plot emerge. Debuts Competition Cinematheque1
16:15
Calvary
Monday July 14 18:00
Fringe Story
Frank
(Israel) Israel Film Service. 70min. Dir: Tor Ben Mayor. The story of the fringe theatre “Orto-Da” whose play “Stones” has a sculpture as the hero. Towards the end of the Second World War, the sculptor Natan Rappaport used granite stones, which were meant for a monument celebrating Hitler’s victory, to create a sculpture commemorating the fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Forty years later, Yinon Tzafrir and his theatre group arrived in Poland to perform their play “Meta-Rabin”, which deals with the assasination of Yitzhak Rabin. Because of a delay in their flight back to Israel they found themselves, by chance, at a ceremony commemorating the fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto, at the place where the sculpture stands. Yinon was left with a strong impression from the sculpture, which radiated life and movement from the inert stone. Presents the Israeli Jewish narrative from the time of the Holocaust until today.
(UK) Lev Cinema, Tel Aviv. 95min. Dir: Lenny Abrahamson. Key cast: Domhnall Gleeson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Scoot McNairy. The “Soronprfbs” are a brilliant and daring — but painfully dysfunctional — avantgarde band. The band-leader is Frank, a charismatic but rather unstable musical genius, who perpetually dons a large, round fake head that makes him look like a cartoon character.
The Van Leer Awards for Israeli Cinema — Documentary Film Cinematheque3
Larson, John Gallagher Jr, Kaitlyn Dever. Twenty-something Grace is a supervisor at a group home for troubled teenagers. Her job isn’t to serve as a substitute mother, teacher or psychologist for the young men and women living there, but in reality she and the rest of the staff somehow fulfil all these roles. During the course of one week, a number of events lead her to reexamine her life and make far-reaching decisions about her future. Panorama Cinema City 11
17:45
Short Term 12
Doc of the Dead
(US) Lev Films, Tel Aviv. 96min. Dir: Destin Daniel Cretton. Key cast: Brie
(UK) The Film Sales Company, New York. 91min. Dir: Alexandre
Other band members are grouchy Clara, Nana the drummer and Baraquethe the bass player. Into this madness enters Jon, a young wannabe musician who comes to replace the band’s previous keyboard player. Jon gets off to a faltering start in the band, though he’s doing his best. Then the band goes off to a secluded cabin to record their album and the close quarters bring a slew of tensions to the surface. Gala Cinematheque3
O Philippe. Key cast: George A Romero, Simon Pegg, Bruce Campbell. The makers of “The People vs. George Lucas” bring us another documentary about a cultural phenomenon with farreaching influences. This time we dive deep into the story of the zombie genre in film and literature and its major influence on contemporary pop culture. The result is a comprehensive, dynamic and enjoyable look at a social virus of global proportions. The film builds a conversation between an impressive line-up of authors, filmmakers and academics, and includes interviews with zombie icons such as author and scriptwriter Max Brooks, well-known
film director George Romero, actor Simon Pegg and many others. Cinemania Cinematheque4
18:00 Absent God: Emmanuel Levinas and the Humanism of the Other
(Israel, France, Belgium) 68min. Dir: Yoram Ron. The film presents the Jewish humanism of Emmanuel Levinas (19061995), one of the foremost thinkers of the 20th century, combining the lessons of the Holocaust with the Wisdom of the Talmud and contemporary philosophy. We investigate the Levinasian notion of “Ethics as Optics”, which draws a line between the biblical prohibition of images, Levinas’s analysis of the human face, and modern-day visual representation of morality. The Jewish Experience Cinematheque2
Frank See box, above
Quod erat demonstrandum
(Romania) Icon Productions, Bucharest. 107min. Dir: Andrei Gruzsniczki. Key cast: Sorin Leoveanu, Ofelia Popii, Florin Piersic Jr. Sorin, a gifted mathematician, doesn’t like to obey rules. His academic career has been thwarted because he refused to become a
member of the Communist Party. While his research, which deals with pure mathematics, is apolitical, he is persecuted by the regime from the day that he sends an academic article for publication in the US. His friend Elena, who wishes to join her husband, an academic who left Romania and never returned, likewise suffers persecution by the regime. Alecu, the Securitate investigator in charge of their files, is also frustrated because he doesn’t get a promotion. Panorama Lev Smadar
18:15 Ben Zaken
(Israel) Laila Films, Tel Aviv. 90min. Dir: Efrat Corem. Key cast: Eliraz Sade, Rom Shoshan, Mekikas Ronen Amar. The Ben Zaken family, which in Hebrew literally means “The Old Son,” live in a rundown neighbourhood in Ashkelon, southern Israel. Shlomi (34) is a single father and lives with his mother. Dina, his older brother. Leon (36) and his 10-year-old daughter, Ruchi in one apartment. Shlomi is lost and always has been lost — within himself, his home, visa-vis his mother and his brother.
(UK, Ireland) Lev Films, Tel Aviv. 100min. Dir: John Michael McDonagh. Key cast: Brendan Gleeson, Chris O’Dowd, Kelly Reilly, Dylan Moran. Father James, a goodhearted Irish country priest, receives a death threat through the grille of the confessional. The crucifixion is set for the following Sunday. With a week to get his affairs in order, the priest re-examines different parts of his life and his relationship with his flock. He confronts questions of faith and sin, pondering his mission, the value of sacrifice, and forgiveness vs. revenge. His preparation for death is further complicated by the visit of his daughter following a suicide attempt. As the week progresses, the forces of darkness seem to close in on the things the priest holds dearest. Panorama Cinema City 11
19:30 Ukraine Is Not a Brothel — The Femen Story
(Australia, Ukraine) Cinephil, Tel Aviv. 78min. Dir: Kitty Green. The female members of Femen in the Ukraine are feminists, but with a twist. They gained notoriety when they began holding bare breasted demonstrations against their country’s image as a source of women for sale throughout Europe. The provocation worked and they received international publicity and suffered persecution by the regime and its supporters. The themes of their protest expanded: they began to protest male hegemony, the persecution of Pussy Riot in neighbouring Russia, and more. In the Spirit of Freedom in Memory of Wim van Leer Cinematheque4
19:45
The Haggiag Awards for Israeli Cinema — Full Length Films
Israeli Video Art and Experimental Film Competition
Cinematheque1
Cinematheque2
July 13-14, 2014 Screen International at Jerusalem 17 n
»
SCREENINGS
20:00 Dog Days
(Austria) Coproduction Office, Paris. 121min. Dir: Ulrich Seidl. Key cast: Maria Hofstatter, Alfred Mrva, Erich Finsches. This biting critique of the Austrian bourgeoisie is conveyed through several interwoven stories, each with its share of violence, alcohol and sex. Stuffed, sweaty bourgeois pigs try to get a little colour; an ageing widower convinces the cleaning lady to wear his deceased wife’s clothing and celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary; a divorced couple who lost their son continues to live in the same apartment and makes one another’s lives miserable; a security guard tries to catch some delinquents who are disturbing the sleep of the residents; and a woman who’s gone out of her mind hitchhikes around the neighbourhood and becomes the security guard’s primary suspect. JFF Special
The Jerusalem Press club, Mishkanot Sha’ananim St, Jerusalem, Israel Editor Wendy Mitchell, wendy. mitchell@screendaily.com, +44 7889 414 856 Chief reporter Andreas Wiseman, andreas. wiseman@screendaily.com, +44 7713 086 674 Reporter Melanie Goodfellow, melanie. goodfellow@btinternet.com Production editor Mark Mowbray, mark. mowbray@screendaily.com,
Monday July 14 20:30 Human Capital
(France, Italy) New Cinema, Tel Aviv. 110min. Dir: Paolo Virzi. Key cast: Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Fabrizio Bentivoglio, Valeria Golino.
The destinies of two families are complicated and irrevocably tied together after a cyclist is knocked off the road by a jeep on the night before Christmas Eve. Gala Lev Smadar
Cinematheque3
20:15 Princess
(Israel) Marker Films, Tel Aviv. 92min. Dir: Tali Shalom Ezer. Key cast: Keren Mor, Shira Haas, Ori Peffer. Adar, a bright and sensitive 12-year-old girl, must manoeuver amid the tempestuous and fiery relationship between Alma, her workaholic mother, and Michael, her young stay-at-home stepfather. While her mother is away from home, Adar is left in Michael’s care, who gradually turns their strong love and attachment into risky roleplaying games. Roaming the city streets, Adar meets Alan — a dreamy boy who keenly resembles her, and brings him into the family. Alan’s presence seems to have a positive effect on their lives, until the relationship between Michael, Adar and Alan takes a sinister turn. After failing to enlist her mother’s help, Adar finds she has no one to depend upon but Alan, and the two young friends embark on a dark journey between
childhood and adolescence, reality and fantasy, which will forever change the rules of the game in the household. The Haggiag Awards for Israeli Cinema — Full Length Films Cinematheque1
20:30 Human Capital See box, above
the family’s daughter, who is undersized for her age and in need of mentorship. What begins as a seemingly innocent friendship becomes a sinister obsession with scientific purity and perfection. Unbeknown to the family, they are living with one of the greatest Nazi war criminals of all times. The Jewish Experience
Wakolda
(France, Argentina, Spain, Norway) Nachshon Films, Ramat Gan. 93min. Dir: Lucia Puenzo. Key cast: Natalia Oreiro, Alex Brandemühl, Diego Peretti, Florencia Bado, Elena Roger. Patagonia, 1960. A German doctor meets an Argentine family and follows them on a desert road to Bariloche, where he becomes the first guest at their refurbished lakeside inn. The family accepts the doctor as one of their own, taking an interest in his medical advice, cultured ways and money. In the meantime, the doctor becomes fascinated by Lilith,
n 18 Screen International at Jerusalem July 13-14, 2014
Cinema City 11
21:15 The Dirties
(Canada) Ellipsis Media International, Rome. 83min. Dir: Matt Johnson. Key cast: Matt Johnson, Owen Williams, Krista Madison. Debuts Competition Cinematheque4
21:30 Miss Violence
(Greece) Elle Driver, Paris. 98min. Dir: Alexandros Avranas. Key cast: Themis Panou, Eleni Roussinou, Reni Pittaki, Chloe Bolota, Sissy Toumasi, Kalliopi Zontanou, Konstantinos Athanasiades.
Members of a nuclear family dance to Leonard Cohen’s “Dance Me To The End Of Love,” celebrating the 11th birthday of the beautiful Angeliki. On the surface everything looks more or less normal, but underneath this celebration rumbles a disturbing, artificial atmosphere. When Angeliki climbs up onto the window sill and jumps to her death, it begins to become clear that something awful is happening in this family. Even stranger yet is that after the suicide, the family members go on with their day as if nothing happened. Outside, the authorities begin to wonder what’s going on within the walls of this house. In the Spirit of Freedom in Memory of Wim van Leer Cinematheque2
22:15 Jersey Boys
(US) Globus Group, Neve Ilan. 134min. Dir: Clint Eastwood. Key cast: John Lloyd Young, Erich Bergen, Michael Lomenda. The story of an American band, The Four Seasons, whose songs made the US (and Israeli) hit parades in the 1960s and 1970s. Masters Cinematheque1
22:30 ’71
(UK) Protagonist Pictures, London. 100min. Dir: Yann Demange. Key
cast: Jack O’Connell, Paul Anderson, Richard Dormer. Northern Ireland, 1971. Domestic conflict in the country escalates into full-blown civil war. Gary, a young English soldier, arrives in Belfast with his unit. The city is divided into areas of “loyal” Protestants and “hostile” Catholics, a confusing and challenging situation even for the most experienced soldiers. When the English soldiers get in a skirmish and one of their weapons is stolen, Gary sets out in pursuit of the robber. But suddenly he finds himself on his own, deep in enemy territory. Now he has to try to get back to his base, and it’s not going to be simple at all. Gala Cinema City 11
Under the Skin
(UK) Lev Films, Tel Aviv. 108min. Dir: Jonathan Glazer. Key cast: Scarlett Johansson, Paul Brannigan, Jeremy McWilliams. A beautiful woman travelling the highways of Scotland seduces men along the way with sexual offers too good to refuse. But she isn’t really a woman, and certainly not a thing of beauty. In fact, this is an extra-terrestrial disguised as a sexy young woman who acts as a trap for men who meet their deaths in a gooey black substance. Into the Night Cinematheque3
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