Screen Jerusalem Issue 4

IS SU E

4

TUESDAY JULY 15 – WEDNESDAY JULY 16, 2014

AT JERUSALEM FILM FESTIVAL www.ScreenDaily.com

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Israeli film-makers call for ceasefire in Gaza Chantal Akerman

Akerman opens desert installation Belgium-born, US-based filmmaker and artist Chantal Akerman will open her desert-inspired installation De La Mer(e) Au Désert at Mamuta Art and Media Centre on Tuesday evening in Hansen House, a former leper colonyturned-cultural centre close to the Cinématheque.

Based on a trip to the town of Arad on the border of the Negev and Judean deserts, the multilayered De La Mer(e) Au Désert installation features several tracking shots projected onto the Jerusalem-stone walls of the building’s vaulted basement.

On the eve of the installation’s opening, Akerman told Screen it was an immersive experience that is meant to disorientate the visitor.

“I wanted to play with this specific space,” she said. “It’s a very physical experience that I’m trying to create. Nothing is still, everything is moving. There’s no narrative. You can’t really describe it.”

As part of the opening, Akerman will read extracts from her autobiographical work Ma Mére Rit, capturing her relationship with her mother.

There will also be regular screenings in the space of her latest, untitled documentary capturing the final years of her mother’s life, which Akerman describes as work-in-progress.

The installation, put together in collaboration with the screenbased arts department of the Bezelel Art Academy and the support of the Ostrovsky Family Fund, is being held within the framework of the festival.

The celebrated film-maker and artist Akerman has been a regular guest at the film festival since the 1970s. She said: “It’s always so brave and daring.”

Melanie Goodfellow

BY WENDY MITCHELL

A group of Israeli film-makers took a stand against the current political conflict yesterday at an emotional press conference here at Jerusalem Film Festival.

Film-maker Keren Yedaya admitted she had thought of pulling her film from the festival before she spoke to the other directors.

She noted tearfully that she is “the mother of two kids who suffer from the fear and panic of the threat of the missiles”.

In a statement, the directors Yedaya, Tali Shalom-Ezer, Nadav Lapid, Efrat Corem, Shira Geffen, Shlomi and Ronit Elkabetz, and Bazi Gete said: “In these violent days, it’s impossible to talk only about cinema while ignoring the horrifying events around us.

“We are scared too. Some of us are parents. Our children are terrified of the code-red sirens and of the thundering sounds of warfare.

We do not seek revenge and do not believe in a military solution; this has proven futile in the past.”

Yedaya and Geffen read names of children who have been killed in Gaza in the past week, which they noted was “not an act of provocation, it’s natural to give them a name and remember”. One of those killed was just 18 months old.

The statement said: “Children

Nir Shaanani

Patrick Wilson

NEWS Wilson sweet for Home Patrick Wilson and his wife Dagmara Dominczyk join the cast of Jerusalem Lab project Sweet Home Tennessee » Page 3

PROFILE Calling ‘action’ Benny Fredman on showing Jerusalem’s dark side in Suicide » Page 4

REVIEW Dark matter Keren Yedaya pulls no punches with traumatic abuse drama That Lovely Girl » Page 7

SCREENINGS Shlomi Elkabetz, Tali Shalom-Ezer, Keren Yedaya, Efrat Corem, Shira Geffen and Nadav Lapid

living in Gaza today are our partners in peace tomorrow. The killing and horror we inflict only push any diplomatic solution further away.”

The group also attacked the Israeli media for being too onesided. “Cameras here, in Israel, film and tell about the suffering and pain of Israeli citizens subject to missile attacks… A dialogue must be established, an acknowledgment of the suffering of the others.

Today, we want to direct those cameras to the suffering of Gaza residents, men, women and children killed during the last few days.”

Although the film festival had mostly tried a business-as-usual approach during the past few days, the film-makers noted “the ‘life goes on’ conception, by which surrounding events cannot and will

not affect our everyday dealings, is morally impossible”.

“In these terrible days, we as artists and creators expect from ourselves, the festival’s administration, the spectators and the media to use this event to issue a clear, loud cry for change. We call the Israeli government to cease fire; we urge it not to send our troops to be killed again, in another pointless, cruel military campaign; we call it to engage in meaningful dialogue with the Palestinian people and its leaders, to achieve a viable peace.”

A petition is likely to circulate for those who are in support of the statement. Lapid added: “I hope it’s a beginning and first step for Israeli film-makers to become more active and influential as one body in Israeli political life.”

Transfax offers taste of Madame Yankelova

BY MELANIE GOODFELLOW

Tel Aviv-based Transfax is set to unveil extracts today from Guilhad Emilio Schenker’s Madame Yankelova’s Fine Literature Club, about a women’s reading club with a secret feminist and cannibalistic agenda.

It is Schenker’s debut feature after award-winning short Lavan, which toured some 70 festivals.

“I’m curious to see the response.

It’s very different from what people normally expect of Israeli cinema, it’s very stylised,” said Transfax founding chief Marek Rozenbaum, adding that the décor and costumes had a 1950s and 1960s feel although it was not set in a specific time.

TODAY

Marek Rozenbaum

A 10 to 20-minute subtitled extract will be shown here in an industry work-in-progress session at Israeli feature-focused Pitch Point today. Adapted from Shmuel Yosef Agnon’s novella The Mistress And The Peddler, the film revolves around a women’s literary club,

which is a front as the women lure attractive men to the event, who are then killed and eaten. Film-maker Dover Kosashvili assisted Schenker in the adaptation.

Rozenbaum said a rough-cut of the film, shot in the studio in March and April, will be ready by August.

Other upcoming projects on the Transfax slate include Arik Rotstein’s Generation 3, Meny Yaesh’s The Bouncer and Kosashvili’s Love Birds, about a couple who meet up as strangers in a hotel room on the 10th anniversary of their marriage.

“It’s very provocative, there’s a lot nudity and it’s a lot of fun,” said Rozenbaum.

The films playing at the festival over the next two days » Page 12

Avranas readies Greek thriller

BY ANDREAS WISEMAN

Miss Violence writer-director Alexandros Avranas is to reteam with producer Faliro House Productions and actors Eleni Roussinou and Christos Loulis on his next film.

“I am writing a new Greek-language script which will be ready in the coming months,” the director told Screen here in Jerusalem. “I want to shoot next summer.

“It’s about a middle-class Greek couple who want to live an easy life, ‘The American Dream’, but they end up carrying out a murder for money in order to sustain their lifestyle,” he continued. “It’s about moral values.”

The as-yet untitled dramathriller, based on a true story that took place in London, has already attracted interest from sales companies in the UK, Europe and the US. The 36-year-old writer-director, repped by WME and Casarotto Ramsay & Associates, said his next film after this thriller would likely be an English-language film.

Alexandros Avranas

NEWS

Patrick Wilson moves into Tennessee

Docs talk makes stand for alternative subjects

By Melanie Goodfellow

By Melanie Goodfellow

Patrick Wilson and Dagmara Dominczyk have signed to appear in Joanna Jurewicz’s psychological thriller Sweet Home Tennessee, about an educated Polish woman rebuilding her life in the US where she finds works as a domestic.

US-based, Polish film-maker Jurewicz presented the project at the final pitching session of Jerusalem Film Lab on Friday. The storyline is based loosely on her own experiences as a teenager.

Poland-born Dominczyk, who moved to the US as a child, is set to play Irene, the maid in a Tennessee mansion. Her real-life husband Wilson (Insidious) is taking a supporting role.

“Their involvement will maximise our international reach and sales. Any additional US equity is going to be dependent on another notable US talent, so after the lab we intend to continue packaging talent with the hope of shooting in 2015,” said US producer Sara Murphy (Land Ho!, God’s Pocket).

To date in the US, the film has secured the backing of Gamechanger Films, a for-profit film fund for features directed by women. Murphy also revealed Poland’s Opus Film had boarded the project, bringing Polish Film Institute backing.

Films on film-makers will be at the heart of a documentary conference entitled ‘Cinema as a Rumour: In memory of Assi Dayan’ at Jerusalem Film Festival on Wednesday.

The annual conference, which is in its third year, is organised by professional body the Israeli Documentary Film-makers Forum, the festival and Duke University of the US. “The aim of the conference is to put the spotlight on documentary topics that are rarely examined in an academic way. There’s a lot of focus on films about the Holocaust and Middle East conflict but films about other subjects rarely get studied,” explained film-

Assi Dayan

maker Orna Raviv, one of the organisers of the event.

The conference is being dedicated this year to Israeli actor and film-maker Assi Dayan, who died in May. There will be a discussion about the documentary Life As A Rumour as well as a TV series

about his controversial and sometimes tempestuous life. Other films up for discussion will include The Go-Go Boys, about legendary Israeli film producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus (see below), and Rohmer In Paris, examining New Wave filmmaker Eric Rohmer’s fascination with the French capital.

Film academic and director of Rohmer In Paris Richard Misek will give a talk entitled ‘Making Films out of Films: Notes from the fringes of legality’.

Other speakers include Duke University professor Yael Munk, who will examine works on Assi Dayan in a paper entitled ‘Death and the boy: auto-fiction or Assi Dayan’s documentations of death’.

Gedeck stars in German book hit

By Andreas Wiseman

The Lives Of Others star Martina Gedeck will join the cast of Julia von Heinz’s Spain-set comedy Ich Bin Dann Mal Weg (literal translation: I’m On My Way) The acclaimed German actress, here in Jerusalem on the Israeli Feature Film jury, will star alongside Devid Striesow in the UFA and Warner Bros Germany pro-

duction, adapted by Jane Ainscough and Christoph Silber from Hape Kerkeling’s book about a man’s pilgrimage. The shoot is due to take place later this summer on the German-language feature.

Gedeck is then due to star alongside Thomas Kretschmann in Arsen A Ostojic’s Second World War drama Man In The Box, about an Austrian family who take a

Jewish doctor into hiding. Also on the cards for the German actress is a renewed collaboration with The Wall director Julian Pölsler on We Murder Stella, an adaptation of The Wall writer Marlen Haushofer’s novella, about the death of a 19-year-old girl as told by the woman whose family took in the teenager before her death. » See profiles, page 4

Shagrir honoured by Spiegel school

By Wendy Mitchell

Nir Shaanani

Go-Go Boys are back in town The Go-Go Boys themselves, Menahem Golan (standing left) and Yoram Globus, were at the festival on Saturday night with director Hilla Medalia to celebrate her documentary about the film legends.

The film’s backers include the Rabinovich Film Fund.

www.screendaily.com

Sam Spiegel Film & Television School is paying tribute to top Israeli producer Micha Shagrir at an event on Thursday night.

Hundreds of prominent Israeli industry figures who have worked with Shagrir over the years will attend the event, sponsored by Israel Film Fund, Jerusalem Film and Television Fund, Gesher Multicultural Film Fund, the Israeli Producers Guild, the New Fund for Cinema and Television, the Israeli Film Academy and the Jerusalem Foundation. The tribute will be held at the Cinematheque as part of the festival.

Shagrir, who was head of Kastel Productions, is one of the

Micha Shagrir

founders of the school and a former chairman of Israel Film Fund. His credits include Avanti Popolo, A Matter Of Size, Sayarim and The War After This War. “Micha Shagrir is a force of nature, a unique producer and storyteller re-inventing himself and adapting to an ever-changing media landscape,” said school head Renen Schorr.

Elizabeth Blackmore

Blackmore boards Children Of The Fall

By Melanie Goodfellow

US actress Elizabeth Blackmore has signed to play the lead role in Israeli director Eitan Gafny’s upcoming kibbutz-set horror picture Children Of The Fall.

Blackmore, whose credits include Evil Dead and The Road Home, will play a US woman whose life on a kibbutz takes a horrific turn when she and her friends swim in the pool on the night of Yom Kippur, offending one of the residents.

Gafny revealed the casting news when presenting the project at the Israeli feature-focused Pitch Point event yesterday.

David Mamet in Jerusalem

David Mamet takes flight

By Melanie Goodfellow

Film-maker and writer David Mamet was at Jerusalem Film Festival on Friday for a public reading of his novella The Handle And The Hold.

Mamet explained the story was based partly on the real-life account of the late US-born Israeli engineer Al Schwimmer, CEO of Israel Aerospace Industries.

“Vets could buy planes for very little after the war. What the Jewish guys did is start up phony airlines… otherwise the FBI wouldn’t let a Jew buy a plane,” said Mamet.

“Al and a friend had bought a B-17 but it was impounded by the FBI and left at Tulsa airport. He told me how they’d broken into the airbase. Neither of them had flown a B-17 before, they took off reading the flight manual.”

July 15-16, 2014 Screen International at Jerusalem 3

Profiles Benny Fredman Suicide By sarah cooper

Jerusalem-born film-maker Benny Fredman describes his first feature Suicide, which centres around a man who puts his family in danger after he borrows money from a loan shark, as “an action thriller inspired by The Usual Suspects, taking place across parallel time zones to increase the film’s rhythm and add another layer of suspense”.

The idea for the film came from the terrifying real-life experience of one of Fredman’s friends, who borrowed money in a similar manner.

“I witnessed my friend crippled with fear; the look on his terrified face when the phone rang stayed with me,” says Fredman, who sold his computer business to pursue the dream of becoming a director, going on to enrol at the Tel Aviv-based film school, Camera Obscura, before making his student film Leak, which travelled the international festival circuit.

Dubbed as the “first action thriller to come out of Israel”, Suicide — a world premiere here — stars Mali Levi and

Suicide; (right) Benny Fredman

Rotem Keinan, with funding from Israel Film Fund and Jerusalem Film Fund.

“This sort of film is a genre that has yet to be done in Israel. We were very lucky that even though this is a very small and young country, cinema is very much alive and we ended up raising the budget we needed to complete the film,”

says Fredman, who shot Suicide entirely in Jerusalem, at more than 60 locations across the city, thanks to support from the city’s police department and local businesses.

“It has always been my dream to shoot a movie in this unique city, I wanted to show the city’s dark side

as only someone who knows every inch of this place could,” adds Fredman, who is now working on his next project, Salvation, which he describes as an “Israeli Breaking Bad” about a young man who starts a business in a Jerusalem neighbourhood but clashes with the local mafia.

Leah Meyerhoff I Believe In Unicorns

By Wendy Mitchell

Writer-director Leah Meyerhoff fully admits the lead character, Davina, in her debut feature I Believe In Unicorns “is about 50% me.”

The film follows a teenage girl growing up in San Francisco and taking care of her wheelchair-bound mother (so far, so true, for Meyerhoff — and she even cast her mother, Toni, in the same role). But that world turns less autobiographical as this imaginative young girl falls in love with young rocker Sterling (Peter Vack) and takes a road trip that turns volatile.

“The entire film is told from her perspective as much as possible,” says Meyerhoff. “I wanted to tell the story of this teenage girl who had this imaginative way of seeing the world.”

She adds: “The reason I wanted to be a film-maker is to tell more stories about young girls; there aren’t enough about them.”

Casting newcomer Natalia Dyer helped bring Davina to life, as the director and actress collaborated on a number

Leah Meyerhoff

of elements — for instance the idea of the unicorn motif came from Dyer. For the writer-director it was the perfect creature to represent this teenage world — both childlike and phallic at the same time.

New York-based Meyerhoff spent five months casting the film, and was tipped off about 16-year-old Nashville high school student Dyer by the Coen broth-

4 Screen International at Jerusalem July 15-16, 2014

ers’ True Grit casting team, who said she was one of the top candidates for the role that went to Hailee Steinfeld. “I knew she could do it,” Meyerhoff says. “Still, it’s a difficult role, she’s in every frame.”

The film was shot on Super 16mm for a warm feel, and the visuals are at times fairy-tale like, with handmade-style animations that showcase Davina’s dream

worlds, plus old home movies, Polaroid pictures and underwater scenes alongside more traditional cinematography.

Unicorns had its world premiere at SXSW and has been a hit on the festival circuit ever since (Meyerhoff ’s shorts have shown at more than 200 festivals).

Jessica Lacy at ICM represents the director and the film.

Meyerhoff is now looking at love from a more adult angle. “I’m writing a feature, a love story about a divorced couple who are getting back together,” she says.

She is keen to continue creating strong female characters. While attending NYU Tisch’s film school, Meyerhoff started a female film-making collective, Film Fatales, for women feature film-makers to tell personal stories. She has had some key inspirations in her own career, including Unicorns producer Heather Rae (Frozen River) and executive producer Allison Anders (Gas Food Lodging). “I want to help the next generation, in the way Allison Anders has helped me,” she says.

www.screendaily.com

Screenings, page 12

Bazi Gete Red Leaves

By Sarah Cooper

With themes of immigration and the family, Ethopian-Israeli director Bazi Gete’s first feature — about an Ethiopian man living in Israel who sells his house after the death of his wife and moves between his children’s homes — is inspired partly

by Gete’s personal experiences and partly

by Shakespeare’s King Lear. “In [Lear] the immigration is internal, from one home to another; the protagonist never leaves the country. The play inspired me to write an immigration story, dealing with subjects such as generation gaps, family life and my personal story,” says Gete, whose family emigrated from Ethiopia to Israel when he was eight years old, going through refugee camps in Sudan.

“Although 30 years has passed, in my eyes, an immigrant stays an immigrant,” says Gete, who admits his attitude has changed during the film-making process. “I began to understand there is also the opportunity to change and become someone else,” he says.

Other than lead actor Debebe Eshetu, Gete cast non-actors in his debut fea-

Red Leaves

ture, which he shot in a documentary style mainly in Tel Aviv. “Each actor knew where he was going and we simply rolled and kept on filming through the scene. I think it was a wise choice.

This almost documentary cinematic style serves the film’s voice and preserves its authenticity,” Gete says.

Red Leaves; (left) Bazi Gete

Continuing with his Shakespearean theme, he is now writing a script called Other Love, this time based on Romeo And Juliet and set in south Tel Aviv. It centres around a tragic love story between a Jewish Ethiopian widow and a young, non-Jewish, Eritrean worker.

“Like in King Lear and Red Leaves, this

film also deals with the unhappiness and sorrow that people cause, and the dangers that lie in prejudices and racism,” says Gete, whose short Medium Rare screened at Jerusalem Film Festival in 2010. “The beautiful Cinematheque overlooking the city walls is a great stage,” adds the director.

Martina Gedeck jury member

By Andreas Wiseman

German actress Martina Gedeck is known for standout performances in acclaimed features including Oscar winner The Lives Of Others, Oscar nominee The Baader Meinhof Complex and hit comedy Mostly Martha.

Now the actress has a different role — juror — during her first trip to Jerusalem, serving on the Israeli Feature Film jury.

“This is a young and modern festival,” she enthuses. “I find it very exciting. The whole city is a fascinating one.”

Gedeck knows about fascinating and challenging cities, having grown up in Berlin in the 1970s.

“We know about walls and a heavy security presence. Being enclosed became normal and natural. It felt harmless to us but, of course, it wasn’t. When the wall came down, we felt free. But this is a different situation here, of course,” she says.

Gedeck has never shied away from challenging roles. Portraying radical terrorist Ulrike Meinhof in The Baader Meinhoff Complex stands out as a par-

www.screendaily.com

Martina Gedeck

ticularly challenging undertaking. “It was difficult because I had to get inside the mind of this complicated and very radical woman but to keep a distance from her dogmatism at the same time. It was an excellent but sad experience. She is a harsh character. She began as a soft woman, who was raised near a concentration camp. Her father was a priest.

Both her parents died by the time she was a teenager.”

Understandably, Gedeck continues to be in demand for directors. Earlier this year she wrapped on Mika Kaurismaki’s period drama The Girl King. “Working with Mika was an extraordinary artistic experience,” she says. “He doesn’t say much. He’s very precise in what he

wants. There was a lot of freedom for me.

I play the mother of Queen Kristina. It gave me a chance to play someone I’ve never played before. She’s always furious, mad. It was more theatrical than normal.

I had tremendous dresses and wigs.”

More recently she finished shooting on a three-part German TV special Tannback, about a small town divided between East Germany and West Germany, set in 1945-52. Later this summer she will shoot Jane Ainscough and Christoph Silber’s adaptation of Hape Kerkeling’s bestselling comedy book Ich Bin Dann Mal Weg from director Julia von Heinz (Hanna’s Journey).

In the autumn she expects to star alongside Thomas Kretschmann in Arsen A Ostojic’s Second World War drama Man In The Box, about an Austrian family who take a Jewish doctor into hiding.

“I’m really looking forward to this film,” explains the actress. “The Second World War remains a common theme for everyone in Germany. They are stories that have to be told.”

July 15-16, 2014 Screen International at Jerusalem 5

The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs

REVIEWS

» That Lovely Girl p9 » Stations Of The Cross p9 » The Kindergarten Teacher p9

Reviews edited by Mark Adams mark.adams@screendaily.com

Stations Of The Cross Reviewed by Dan Fainaru

That Lovely Girl Reviewed by Mark Adams The unrelenting abuse that runs through Keren Yedaya’s That Lovely Girl is at times heartbreakingly difficult to bear — let alone watch — but while this bleak and dour film is defined by its sense of unhappiness, the strong central performances make it disturbingly mesmeric as it weaves its sad tale.

The film is simply about abuse — sexual, physical, emotional and mental, and not forgetting self-harm — and while perhaps too dark and lacking a positive moral resolution, its powerful story is told with simple rigour and a determination to pull no punches.

The film opens in relatively tantalising fashion as Tami (Turjeman), in her early twenties, spends time with rather brutish Moshe (Grad), though initially their relationship is not clear. Soon it is evident that while they are father and daughter they live together in a cruel and often violent relationship from which she seems unable to free herself. Instead she is sexually subservient, given to self-harming and binge eating and desperate to hang onto the ‘love’ that Moshe offers her.

When he brings back a girlfriend for Passover, Tami is mortified and walks out of their flat, ending up on a Tel Aviv beach where she drinks with a bunch of guys and ends up having sex with several of them.

When she loses her purse on the beach, Tami is helped

by Shuli (Abecassis) who takes her back to her flat, lets her sleep there and tends her wounds — mirroring the only bit of tender care shown by Moshe — when she self harms by cutting her arms. The two women start to live a low-key domestic life, with Tami’s need for affection being satisfied.

Director Yedaya has adapted the story from the novel Away From His Absence by Shez, and while That Lovely Girl is consistently uncomfortable, her determination — and that of her actors — to never veer from its depressing and sad story is oddly admirable. Even a dream sequence late on, which offers a perverse variation on ‘happiness’ for this couple, even fits into the gloomy ethos of the film.

www.screendaily.com

Israeli features

Isr-Fr-Ger. 2014. 94mins Director/screenplay Keren Yedaya Production companies Transfax, Bizibi, Riva Filmproduktion International sales Other Angle Pictures, otheranglepictures@ gmail.com Producers Marek Rozenbaum, Michael Rozenbaum, Emmanuel Agneray, Jerome Bleitrach, Michael Eckelt Cinematography Laurent Brunet Editor Arik LahavLeibovich Main cast Maayan Turjeman, Tzahi Grad, Yael Abecassis

A rigorous, stylistically impeccable tale of a 14-year-old girl who, in an act of sheer faith, decides the ultimate sacrifice will restore the health of her autistic brother, Dietrich Brüggemann’s film consists of 14 immobile takes, each one inspired by the stations of Christ’s Calvary on the way to Golgotha. Shades of Michael Haneke and references to classic religious paintings will not go unnoticed, though rest assured the Catholic church is not about to integrate this new version of the Passion of Christ into its catechism. This ferocious satire of the ultra-orthodox Catholics in the south of Germany will be praised by those who oppose religious fanaticism, but will have little effect on the fanatics themselves.

Starting with a session of pure indoctrination, which should leave the audience in no doubt about the type of faith being examined, adolescent Maria (van Acken) is exposed on the one hand to the bullying remonstrations of her rigidly pious mother (Weisz), and on the other to the gentle, chaste advances of a boy (Knapp) whom she pushes away.

In the background — as described vividly by her parish priest, Pater Weber (Stetter) — lies a world full of sin, demonic temptation, satanic traps and untold risks, which she has to fight constantly to live up to the vow she has taken to be a dedicated soldier of Christ.

As she nears her confirmation ceremony, which should make her fully responsible for her acts, she is persuaded by her mother that she is on the verge of sin and so accepts her priest’s admonitions to embrace a life of sacrifice and devotion if she wants to reach the arms of Jesus, once she goes to heaven. She starts by renouncing all life’s comforts, and convinces herself the only way to preserve her purity is to stop eating and allow her life to ooze away before she fails her faith.

To make sure he puts the blame only on extremists, Brüggemann’s story includes French au-pair girl Bernadette (Aron), who offers a humane, sympathetic version of Catholicism.

» The Babadook p9 » The Raid 2 p10 » She’s Lost Control p10

Panorama

Ger-Fr. 2014. 107mins Director Dietrich Brüggemann Production companies UFA Fiction, SWR, ARTE, Cine Plus Media Service International sales Beta Cinema, www. betacinema.com Producers Jochen Laube, Leif Alexis, Fabian Maubach Co-producers Stefanie Gross, Barbara Häbe, Frank Evers, Helge Neubronner Screenplay Dietrich Brüggemann, Anna Brüggemann Cinematography Alexander Sass Production designer Klaus-Peter Platten Main cast Lea Van Acken, Franziska Weisz, Florian Stetter, Lucie Aron, Moritz Knapp, Michael Kamp, Birge Schade, Hanns Zischler, Ramin Yazdani, Georg Wesch

July 15-16, 2014 Screen International at Jerusalem 7 n

REVIEWS

The Kindergarten Teacher Reviewed by Dan Fainaru Nadav Lapid’s film is all about the crass, materialistic Israeli society that has neither the time nor the patience to notice beauty springing from under its feet… with one exception to the rule, a kindergarten teacher who is sensitive enough to recognise it and determined enough to do her best to preserve it, but does she have the skills to succeed?

It is more than likely the response to The Kindergarten Teacher will again be as controversial as it was to Lapid’s debut film Policeman, dividing between admiration for Lapid’s visual style and his eloquent all-embracing allegories or damned for pretty much the same thing.

Married to a nice but uncultured engineer (Raz), whose predilection for the silliest popular TV shows is established in the film’s first sequence, Nira (Larry), the kindergarten teacher of the title, suffers in silence as her husband proves insensitive to the finer points of life and its beauties.

She has belatedly discovered in herself an obsession for poetry that moves her to tears and follows an afternoon course to hopefully allow her to write some of her own.

Nira’s life will be turned upside down when she discovers in her kindergarten, five-year-old Yoav (Shnaidman) spouting poetry (which

Israeli features Isr-Fr. 2014. 120mins Director/screenplay Nadav Lapid Production companies Pie Films, Haut et Court, Arte France International sales Le Pacte, www.le-pacte.com Producers Talia Kleinhendler, Osnat Handelsman-Keren, Carole Scotta Cinematography Shai Goldman Editor Era Lapid Production designer Miguel Merkin Main cast Sarit Larry, Avi Shnaidman, Lior Raz, Ester Rada, Guy Oren, Yehezkel Lazarov, Dan Toren, Avishag Kahalani

Lapid claims he had written when he was Yoav’s age), using words to which no regular kid is exposed. She finds out Yoav’s mother has run away with a lover and the boy lives with his father (Lazarov), a successful restaurateur who could not care less whether or not his son has a special gift.

Even worse, Nira discovers the boy’s nanny, an aspiring actress in her free time, has appropriated some of Yoav’s poems to help her own

career. This is a crime Nira will not condone, though she does exactly the same thing in her poetry class.

Lapid makes no bones about what he likes and what he dislikes, his camera often indulging in sneering asides, whether it looks at the party Nira’s son throws for his soldier friends or at Yoav’s brutishly arrogant father observed in his natural surroundings, one of his fashionable, over-priced eateries.

With the aid of creaking doors, crashing sound edits, flickering lights, a traditional creepy cellar and a fluffy pet dog whose life expectancy always seems low, Kent and her stylish Polish cinematographer Radek Ladczuk (whose credits include Suicide Room) create many disturbing widescreen images and a

ratcheting of tension over the full 94 minutes.

Davis is the absolutely opposite of her superelegant television sleuth persona. Here she forces us to join in her sleepless, crazed journey at the mercy of Babadook and the bitter disappointments of her life: it is certainly a handclenching ride.

The Babadook Reviewed by Frank Hatherley The debut feature of writer-director Jennifer Kent, The Babadook packs a considerable smallbudget punch, with genuinely chilling and unexplained events escalating to a throbbing climax, part psychological case study, part unrelenting nightmare.

This is a genuinely creepy horror film and its star Essie Davis — hardly off the screen — is one of Australia’s most popular television actors, currently playing the glamorous title role in a second series of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, which has been sold by ABC to 120 territories worldwide. The film was a cult hit at Sundance and has developed a strong following after appearing at a series of international film festivals.

The unrelenting focus is on the fierce relationship between depressed dementia-ward nurse Amelia (Davis) and her bright but spooked six-year-old son Samuel (Wiseman, from whom Kent has drawn a brilliantly quirky performance). Samuel, who has “significant behavioural problems”, has somehow found a kids’ pop-up book entitled ‘Mister Babadook’, about an evil bogeyman who lurks in cupboards and under beds.

www.screendaily.com

Into the night Aus. 2013. 94mins Director/screenplay Jennifer Kent Production company Causeway Films International sales eOne Films International, www.international. eonefilms.com Producers Kristina Ceyton, Kristian Moliere Executive producers Jonathan Page, Michael Tear, Jan Chapman, Jeff Harrison Cinematography Radek Ladczuk Editor Simon Njoo Production designer Alex Holmes Music Jed Kurzel Main cast Essie Davis, Noah Wiseman, Hayley McElhinney, Daniel Henshall, Barbara West

July 15-16, 2014 Screen International at Jerusalem 9 n

REVIEWS

The Raid 2 Reviewed by Tim Grierson That rare sequel which expands the scope of its predecessor to produce something grander, richer and far more rewarding, The Raid 2 elevates the franchise from a very enjoyable closequarters action extravaganza into a full-blown crime epic. The martial-arts setpieces remain extraordinary, but writer-director Gareth Evans has dreamed up a story that, while hardly ingenious, puts enough muscle on the bone so this exhilarating follow-up film is gripping even when the fists aren’t flying.

Fans of the first instalment, The Raid: Redemption — as it was titled in the US — may be slightly disappointed the sequel does not bring back the original’s cunning Die Hard-like structure. But strong reviews will be catnip to genre aficionados, and glowing word of mouth about the numerous exemplary action scenes all but guarantees The Raid 2 will be a cult hit like its predecessor.

Taking place right after the original, The Raid 2 finds beleaguered rookie cop Rama (Uwais) barely having time to recover from the events of the first film, where he took down a whole apartment complex of bad guys, before he is given his next assignment. He must go undercover in a high-security prison and befriend Uco (Putra), the hotheaded son of a feared crime boss named Bangun (Pakusadewo). After two years in prison and earning the boss’s trust,

Into the night Indo. 2013. 148mins Director/screenplay Gareth Evans Production companies Stage 6, XYZ Films, Merantau Films International sales XYZ Films, www.xyzfilms.com Producers Ario Sagantoro, Nate Bolotin, Aram Tertzakian Executive producers Rangga Maya BarackEvans, Irwan D Mussry, Nick Spicer, Todd Brown Cinematography Matt Flannery, Dimas Imam Subhono Editors Gareth Evans, Andi Novianto Music Joseph Trapanese, Aria Prayogi, Fajar Yuskemal Main cast Iko Uwais, Yayan Ruhian, Arifin Putra, Oka Antara, Tio Pakusadewo, Alex Abbad

Rama is set free thanks to Bangun’s connections and invited to join his criminal underworld. Rama proves a valuable ally to Bangun, but the older man’s empire is threatened by Uco’s impatience to assume power, provoking him to join forces with an ambitious and ruthless up-and-coming rival, Bejo (Abbad).

Surrounding Rama is a slew of new villains who are far more defined than the original’s cartoonish nemeses. Starting with the contentious father-son dynamic between Bangun and Uco, The Raid 2 drops Rama into a world of duplicitous criminals in which there is no such thing as loyalty. Evans, who also edited the movie, swiftly but sharply documents the shift-

ing allegiances that take place, all of which put Rama’s cover in danger.

This new movie is just as brutal and bloody as the first, the shock of the pummeling violence eliciting a mixture of gasps and laughs because of Evans’ over-the-top audacity.

The film-maker exhibits some of the same blend of high/low artistry that we see in the films of Quentin Tarantino and Nicolas Winding Refn — they take their work very seriously, but there remains a fanboy gleefulness in the margins — and The Raid 2 is so thrilling in part because it walks beautifully the line between ponderous grandeur and freewheeling, boyish mayhem.

She’s Lost Control Reviewed by Mark Adams An absolutely chilling and compelling psychological drama with sex at its core, writer/director Anja Marquardt’s debut film She’s Lost Control is an unglossy and taut picture that reflects the emotional tension within its central character, a behavioural psychologist specialising in sexual surrogacy.

The title does give things away just a little, but the film is subtly unsettling and shot to reflect a bleak New York life. It is at heart a rather cold and perhaps inaccessible film, but there is much to admire in Marquardt’s control and precision as well as a well-sustained lead performance by Brooke Bloom.

Ronah (Bloom) takes on clients with intiPanorama US. 2014. 90mins Director/screenplay Anja Marquardt Production companies SLC Film Production,

n 10 Screen International at Jerusalem July 15-16, 2014

Rotor Film International sales Paradigm Agency, www.paradigmagency. com Producers Anja Marquardt, Kiara C Jones, Mollye Asher

macy issues and starts to work with hunky, bearded Johnny (Menchaca), who veers between being nervous and hostile.

Her meetings with Johnny are intercut with scenes from her lonely life (taking hormone shots, Skype chats with her brother, legal issues over a water leak and quiet, solitary meals) though as the meetings develop she starts to reveal more of herself, and eventually heads into darker territory.

Bloom is impressive as a smart but oddly naïve woman who is drawn into a ‘relationship’ of sorts, while Marc Menchaca is equally impressive as a troubled and fractured soul.

The production values are consistently high, with Marquardt making good use of the locations and her strong support cast.

Executive producers Oren Moverman, Dax Phelan, Scott Ryan, James Su Cinematography Zachary Galler Editor Nick Carew Production designer David Meyer

Music Simon Taufique Main cast Brooke Bloom, Marc Menchaca, Dennis Boutsikaris, Laila Robins, Tobias Segal, Roxanne Day, Ryan Homchick, Robert Longstreet

www.screendaily.com

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

Screenings

» Screening times and venues are

correct at the time of going to press

Edited by Paul Lindsell paullindsell@gmail.com

Princess

TUESDAY JULY 15

See box, below left

09:30

13:00

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 Cinematheque3

Zip & Zap and the Marble Gang

(Spain) Film Factory, Barcelona. 106min. Dir: Oskar Santos. Key cast: Javier Gutierrez, Daniel Cerezo, Raul Rivas.

Twins Zip and Zap are sent to a strict boarding school run by the evil principle Falconetti. Zip and Zap establish the Marble Underground, whose goal is to unseat Falconetti, who makes the kids’ lives miserable. Thanks to a lot of pluck and courage, they discover a mysterious secret hidden between the walls of the institution and embark on a journey that will become the adventure of a lifetime.

JFF Kids Cinematheque1

10:00 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?

Why do we save things that are meant to disappear?

Israeli Short Film Competition — Programme 1 Cinematheque3

13:45 Quod erat demonstrandum

Tuesday July 15 12:00 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 manoeuvre 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.

The Haggiag Awards for Israeli Cinema — Full Length Films Cinematheque1

Berlin. 90min. Dir: Michael Verhoeven. Key cast: Alice Dwyer, Maxim Mehmet, Katharina Nesytowa.

In 1968, 20-year-old Laura returns to Munich to attend her father’s funeral.

Overcome with grief, Laura and her mother must face the family’s traumatic history: having survived the Holocaust, Laura’s parents stayed in post-war Germany to start a new life. However, their horrific experiences of genocide and concentration camps loomed over their daily lives. Now, in the face of another tragedy, will Laura come to understand her parent’s traumatic past?

The Jewish Experience Cinematheque2

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 Jewish Experience Cinematheque2

11:15 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 run-

n 12 Screen International at Jerusalem July 15-16, 2014

down 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, vis-a-vis his mother and his brother.

The Haggiag Awards for Israeli Cinema — Full Length Films Cinematheque3

11:30 Let’s Go!

(Germany) Eikon Film,

11:45 Gueros

(Mexico) Mundial, Los Angeles. 106min.

Dir: Alonso Ruizpalacios.

Key cast: Tenoch Huerta, Sebastian Aguirre, Ilse Salas.

Tomas’s mother is fed up. After he is caught throwing a water balloon from the roof onto a woman pushing a pram, the mother decides to cart the teenager off to Mexico City to his older brother Federico. Federico (aka Sombra) lives in a chaotic student flat with no electricity, with his

roommate Santos. Due to student demonstrations, the National University is shut down and the two roommates have been “rotting” at home, having philosophical conversations and stealing electricity from the neighbours. Fortunately Tomas steps in to wrench them out of their endless routine and the threesome leave the apartment in search of Epigmenio Cruz, Tomas’ favourite singer.

(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.

Panorama Cinematheque2

14:00

Debuts Competition

Jealousy

Lev Smadar

(France) Lev Films, Tel Aviv. 77min. Dir: Philippe Garrel. Key cast: Louis Garrel, Anna Mouglalis, Rebecca Convenant.

In 1965, when he was only 17 years old, Philippe Garrel made a short film in which he cast his father, wellknown stage actor Maurice Garrel, in the role of a father spending a weekend with his mistress when his son pays a visit. Shortly after the death of his father, Garrel decided to make an updated version of the autobiographical short.

12:00 Forbidden Films

(Germany) Blueprint Film. 94min. Dir: Felix Moeller.

The Third Reich produced more than 1,200 feature films. Today, more than 70 years after the Nazi regime, 40 of these films remain banned. Out of fear for their anti-Semitic and incendiary content, none of these films may be released on DVD or broadcast on television — they remain under lock and key, and can only be shown behind closed doors at scholarly events. Film-maker and researcher Felix Moeller continues to examine the ideology behind the notorious banned films of the Nazi era.

The Jewish Experience Cinematheque4

Masters Lev Smadar

Joachim Prinz: I Shall Not Be Silent + Reporting on the Times

(US) Menemsha Films.

50min. Dir: Rachel Eskin Fisher.

A captivating and moving portrait of Joachim

Further JFF coverage, see screendaily.com

Prinz — one of the most outspoken rabbis living under the Nazi regime who went on to become a leading American civil rights activist.

16:30 Above and Beyond

The Jewish Experience Cinematheque4

She’s Lost Control

(US) SLC Film, New York. 90min. Dir: Anja Marquardt. Key cast: Brooke Bloom, Marc Menchaca, Dennis Boutsikaris.

Ronah is a sex therapist who teaches inhibited men to deal with the thing they fear most: intimacy. The film takes us along with Ronah — between clients, down hotel corridors, amid claustrophobic shots of Manhattan, into professional arguments, and through disturbing phone conversations with her brother, in which Ronah chooses to remain oblivious to their mother’s deteriorating state. It’s hard to place a finger on the precise moment in which she loses control.

But it has to do with a new client, Johnny, a shy and intelligent, but somewhat hostile, doctor who causes her to let down her professional guard.

Panorama Cinematheque1

True Friends

(France) Eden Cinema, Tel Aviv. 104mins. Dir: Stephan Archinard, Francois Prevot-Leygonie.

Key cast: Jean-Hughes Anglade, Gerard Lanvin, Wladimir Yordanoff.

Paul, Walter and Jacques are childhood friends in their 50s, each with very different personalities.

Paul is a writer lacking inspiration, Walter owns a renowned restaurant and Jacques, who is gay, is an intellectual bookseller in Paris. Walter, who is overly protective of Clemence (his 20-year-old daughter whom he raised alone following his divorce), believes that in friendship and love everything has to be in the open, and he does not tolerate lies. When Clemence falls in love with

Tuesday July 15 15:45 Tangerines

(Estonia, Georgia ) Cinemavault, Toronto.

87min. Dir: Zaza Urushadze. Key cast: Lembit Ulfsak, Giorgi Nakashidze, Elmo Nuganen.

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

Paul, despite their 30-year age difference, they worry about Walter’s reaction.

While many in their circle learn of the affair and come to accept it, they decide not to tell Walter right away, and so the lying begins.

Gala Cinema City 11

15:30 The Polgar Variant

(Israel) Lama Films, Tel Aviv. 68min. Dir: Yossi Aviram.

The Polgar sisters, Suzan, Sofi and Judit, did not choose to become the heroines of this story. It was their father, who, driven by his educational

16:00

pick the tangerines that have ripened in his orchard. The war reaches them quickly and after some exchanges of fire 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

vision, determined their destiny before they were even born. Laszlo Polgar believed that “geniuses are made, not born”, and he set out to prove it.

The canvas he chose was his three daughters. The medium he chose was chess. No kindergarten, no school. Three girls, isolated from the normal world of kids, studied and practised chess every day, all day long, for years.

The Van Leer Awards for Israeli Cinema — Documentary Film Cinematheque3

15:45 Tangerines See box, above

Doc of the Dead

(UK) The Film Sales Company, New York.

91min. Dir: Alexandre O Philippe. Key cast: with: George A Romero, Simon Pegg, Bruce Campbell.

Documentary about a cultural phenomenon with far-reaching influences.

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

Marzipan Flowers (closed Screening)

(Israel) Tazfilm Productions. 74min.

Dir: Adam Kalderon.

Key cast: Nouli Omer, Tal Kallai, Efrat Aviv.

Tells the story of Hadas, 48, a woman living in a southern Israeli kibbutz.

After her husband is killed in a freak accident, she is scrutinised by fellow kibbutz members threatened by her status as a beautiful widow. Lost and vulnerable, Hadas moves to the big city. She finds unexpected help and support from roommate Petel, a colourful transgender, with a mysterious past. They form an alliance of friendship and support, which is put to the test earlier than they had imagined.

Fringidaire Cinema City 11

16:15 The Airstrip — Decampment of Modernism, Part III

(Germany) Filmgalerie 451, Berlin. 108min.

Dir: Heinz Emigholz.

Imagine an airspace into which a bomb has been dropped. The bomb has not reached the site of its detonation, but there is no way to stop its speedy approach. The time between the bomb’s release and its explosion is neither the future nor the past. The flight time of the bomb describes absolute nothingness, consisting of all the possibilities that in just a moment will no longer exist. This story will end before it has begun.

Carte Blanche Cinematheque2

(US) Playmount Productions, New York.

87min. Dir: Roberta Grossman.

A fascinating documentary about the birth of the Israel Air Force. In 1948, a group of former Second World War pilots, mostly Americans, volunteered to take part in the war of independence alongside the forces fighting for the creation of the state of Israel. This group of Mahal (Foreign Volunteer) personnel filled key positions in reinforcing the Israeli forces during the war and laid the foundation for the creation of the Israel Air Force.

Combines archival footage and presents these historical images with fresh and entertaining interviews with veteran Mahal pilots, describing their unique contribution to the creation of the State and emphasising the deep link between Diaspora Jewry and the early state of Israel.

JFF Special Cinematheque1

17:30 Jimmy P

(US, France) United King, Ramat Hasharon.

117mins. Dir: Arnaud Desplechin. Key cast: Benicio Del Toro, Mathieu Amalric, Gina McKee. Jimmy Picard, an American Indian who fought in the Second World War, suffers from debilitating headaches, loss of hearing, and peculiar dreams. The military hospital classifies him as schizophrenic, but his situation is extremely confusing. Enter French psychoanalyst Georges Devereux, who is researching Native American culture and is called upon by hospital staff in an effort to solve the riddle of the mysterious patient. The two develop a warm and unusual relationship, examining Jimmy’s memories and »

July 15-16, 2014 Screen International at Jerusalem 13 n

SCREENINGS

and Tami are father and daughter.

without the new woman in his life.

The Haggiag Awards for Israeli Cinema — Full Length Films Cinematheque1

Gala

And So It Goes

18:30 Night Will Fall

(Israel, US, UK) Cinephil, Tel Aviv.

80min. Dir: Andre Singer.

In 1945, cameramen from Britain’s Army Film Unit captured footage of Bergen-Belsen. Filmmaker Sidney Bernstein planned to use this material alongside other allied footage with the intention to confront German citizens with their government’s crimes.

Alfred Hitchcock was enlisted as the film’s dreams like a pair of detectives.

editor. The images of corpses and emaciated inmates provided shocking evidence of the Nazi regime’s crimes, but due to a series of circumstances (mainly that the film would be counterproductive to the goal of German post-war reconstruction), the film was left unfinished. Now, 70 years later, “Night Will Fall” retraces the story of this unfinished film, known for decades as “the missing Hitchcock”.

The Jewish Experience Cinematheque2

Masters

lawlessness, Alias has a hard time fitting in and finding personal security.

Cinema City 11

Debuts Competition Cinematheque3

White Shadow

(Germany, Italy, Tanzania) 117min. Dir: Noaz Deshe. Key cast: Hamisi Bazili, James Gayo, Salum Abdallah.

Alias, an albino African boy, lives in a region where Albino body parts are trafficked for use by witch doctors. Fearing for her son’s life, Alias’s mother sends him to live in the city with his uncle, who puts him to work selling DVDs, sunglasses and mobile phones. Alias has many regular adolescent experiences, but the threats of violence don’t cease, and to these are added new conflicts. In a reality of religious strife and

17:45 Dior and I

(France) Submarine, New York. 89min.

Dir: Frederic Tcheng.

In 2012, when the legendary House of Christian Dior announced that Raf Simons would fill the empty seat of artistic director, quite 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 exactly eight weeks to create his debut collection

n 14 Screen International at Jerusalem July 15-16, 2014

at Dior — a far cry from the five or six months usually allotted for such a task. A rare peek into the fashion house, and into Simons’ work process.

Int. Documentaries Cinematheque4

18:00 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 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 Lev Smadar

18:30 Night Will Fall See box, above

19:00 That Lovely Girl

(Israel) Transfax, Tel

Aviv. 95min. Dir: Keren Yedaya. Key cast: Maayan Turjeman, Tzahi Grad, Yael Abecassis.

Moshe and Tami are a couple. Moshe is in his 50s and Tami is in her early 20s. They live together in a cruel and violent relationship, from which it seems that Tami can’t set herself free. Moshe

20:00 Carte Blanche: Shorts

19:45

Tuesday July 15

Cinema City 11

(US) United King, Ramat Hasharon. 93mins. Dir: Rob Reiner. Key cast: Michael Douglas, Diane Keaton, Yaya DaCosta.

Real Estate agent Oren Little is one rude, selfcentred, money-hungry guy. His plan is very clear: to make one more hit on the real estate market, and then to retire and spend the rest of his life alone. But as in every romantic comedy, a plan isn’t a plan unless it gets foiled, and this is what happens when Little’s estranged son is arrested and comes to drop off his nine-year-old daughter, whom grandpa didn’t even know existed. Oren tries to pawn the kid off on his quirky neighbour, but discovers soon enough that he can’t live without his granddaughter — or

Carte Blanche Cinematheque4

20:15 Spirals See box, below

20:30 To Kill a Man

(France, Chile) Film Factory, Barcelona.

82mins. Dir: Alejandro Fernandez Almendras.

Key cast: Daniel Candia, Daniel Antivilo, Alejandra Yanez.

Jorge is a devoted family man. He lives in a Chilean suburb and is forced to accept the terror and intimidation of the neighbourhood crime boss and his gang. But things become more complicated after Jorge’s son attempts to confront the bully and takes a bullet to his leg. And that is just the beginning. A barrage of threats and abuse bring

Tuesday July 15 20:15 Spirals

(Israel) 80min. Dir: Yael Gur. Four charming Russian immigrants, only daughters of single mothers, meet at a theatre workshop where they can tell their stories without being judged.

Two years later, they still cling to the family unit they created and meet in Tel Aviv, in a dilapidated house with a gang of decadent German Shepherds (the director’s home). The conflicts that arise are reflected in footage from their crucial theatre period. The girls recognise the influence of traumatic incidents from their early childhood on the present. They

bring the incidents to light, so freeing themselves from the past. Diana Golbi auditions for “Israeli Idol”. She wins and deals with the contrast between success and self-expression. Marta, a street urchin since 14, decides not to enlist in the army and auditions for a prestigious acting school. Anna enlists in a combat unit and deals with her eating disorders, and The Redhead sees military service as a ticket to Israeli society and realises she’s a flower child. “Spirals” — a manic montage settled by the insights of adolescence.

The Van Leer Awards for Israeli Cinema — Documentary Film Cinematheque3

Tuesday July 15 20:45 Friends from France

(France, Germany, Russia, Canada) Pyramide, Paris.

100min. Dir: Anne Weil, Philippe Kotlarski.

Key cast: Soko, Jeremie Lippmann, Vladimir Fridman.

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 Russian-Jewish 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 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 Cinematheque2

Looking for a terrific action film with amazing cinematography?

Gareth Evans returns to Indonesia with his hero, Officer Rama. This time, Rama goes to jail as an undercover agent to expose a brutal crime gang.

Naturally, the mission proves more difficult than expected and the hardened criminals are even tougher and more vicious than those in the first film, leading Rama on an odyssey of violence like no other.

and norms is revealed, in which astronomical pricetags make certain artists more sought after than others.

Carte Blanche Cinematheque4

22:15 Intrepido: A Lonely Hero See box, below

23:00 The Babadook

(Australia) Entertainment One, Montreal. 92min.

Dir: Jennifer Kent.

Key cast: Essie Davis, Noah Wiseman, Daniel Henshall.

“Do you want to die?”

Samuel asks his mother Amelia, who in turn wonders whether the question is a threat or a warning. Throughout her son’s seven years, Amelia has dealt with his volatile temper, and now it seems that Samuel has begun to turn his violent behaviour on her. But when a strange children’s book entitled “Mr Babadook” appears mysteriously on his bookshelf, foreshadowing horrors for mother and child, Amelia begins to wonder whether some creature is actually lurking in the night in the dark corridors of their house.

Into the Night Cinematheque2

Wednesday July 16 09:30 Minuscule: Valley of the Lost Ants

(France) Futurikon, Paris. 89min. Dir: Helene Giraud, Thomas Szabo.

Leftovers from a picnic in a peaceful valley ignite an all-out war between two rival ant colonies, fighting obsessively over the same prize: a box of sugar

cubes. A ladybug with a clipped wing finds shelter in the sugary treasure, befriends a black ant, and helps him rescue his fellow ants from the clutches of the red ants. On the way the clip-winged ladybug gets away by the skin of her teeth from a frog, a fish and a lizard, which from her perspective look like dinosaurs from Jurassic Park.

JFF Kids Cinematheque3

10:00 24 Days

(France) Alexandre Films, Paris. 110mins.

Dir: Alexandre Arcady.

Key cast: Zabou Breitman, Pascal Elbe, Jacques Gamblin.

January 20, 2006. After dinner with his family, Ilan Halimi called an attractive girl he had met at work and made plans to meet her for coffee. Ilan did not suspect a thing; he was 23 and had his whole life ahead of him. The next time Ilan’s family heard from him, it was through a cryptic online message from kidnappers demanding a ransom in exchange for their son’s life.

The Jewish Experience Cinematheque1

Cinematheque3 Cinema City 11

22:00 The Art Rush

Jorge to situations he never dreamed possible. When the authorities are unable to help him and his family faces daily threats, it appears that Jorge has but one alternative.

Debuts Competition Lev Smadar

20:45 Friends from France See box, above

21:00 The Kindergarten Teacher

(Israel) Pie Films, Tel Aviv. 120min. Dir: Nadav Lapid. Key cast: Sarit Larry, Avi Shnaidman, Lior Raz, Hamuchtar.

In a world that does not appreciate artists, where sensitive souls don’t stand a chance, a poetry-loving kindergarten teacher

discovers a child poet and decides to take it upon herself to nurture him, to save his greatness from the world, to salvage him from the banal, the mediocre and the crude — to save him from life itself. It is the story of a female Don Quixote, who strives to save the world through the poetry of a child, and of a pensive child who has no desire to be saved.

The Haggiag Awards for Israeli Cinema — Full Length Films Cinematheque1

21:45 The Raid 2

(US, Indonesia) Sony Pictures, Los Angeles.

150mins. Dir: Gareth Evans. Key cast: Iko Uwais, Yayan Ruhian, Arifin Putra.

(France) The Festival Agency, Paris. 86min.

Dir: Marianne Lamour.

When works of art are sold for tens of millions of dollars or more, it is clear that the art world is also — if not primarily — a market. The film takes us on a journey between the established art centres of Venice, Paris, Basel and New York, to no less important centres in the 21st-century global art economy, such as Dubai, Hong Kong and Beijing.

From art fairs, exhibition openings, and public auctions, to encounters with art dealers, curators, artistic consultants, collectors and even a few artists, the director tries to understand just how this global market works.

Gradually a set of rules

Tuesday July 15 22:15 Intrepido: A Lonely Hero

(Italy) Rai Trade, Rome. 104min. Dir: Gianni Amelio. Key cast: Antonio Albanese, Livia 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 “fill-in”, 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 young 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 Cinematheque3

»

July 15-16, 2014 Screen International at Jerusalem 15 n

SCREENINGS

Maidan See box, right

10:45 Eye Am

(France, Turkey) Iki Film, Istanbul. 78min.

Dir: Hakkı Kurtulus, Melik Saracoglu. Key cast: Melik Saracoglu, Bilgin Saracoglu, gsmail 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 Lumiere brothers… But soon enough the film turns to focus on his present struggle to regain his vision and to make films.

Panorama Lev Smadar

11:15 Watchers of the Sky

(US, Netherlands, Chad, Rwanda) Propeller Films, New York. 122mins. Dir: Edet Belzberg.

In the 1920s, Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish lawyer, tried to convince the international legal system to create a legal classification for the horrific crimes in Armenia.

After escaping Nazi Germany and coming to the United States, Lemkin coined the term “genocide” and dedicated his life to building a system of international law that would prevent such acts from happening again.

The film follows Lemkin’s story and goes on to focus on four protagonists who carry on his work to this day. These people are fighting to bring to justice those who are responsible for the crimes committed in Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Darfur and Syria, while the international political system doesn’t do much more than official reprimands.

In the Spirit of Freedom in Memory of Wim van Leer Cinematheque4

11:45 Israeli Short Film Competition — Program 4 The Van Leer Awards for Israeli Cinema — Short Film Cinematheque3

Wednesday July 16 10:00 Maidan

(Netherlands, Ukraine) Atoms & Void. 130min.

Dir: Sergei Loznitsa.

Sergei Loznitsa left everything and went to Kiev last December.

The acclaimed filmmaker took his camera to Maidan Square and intensively documented the events that began on November 21, 2013 in response to the decision of the Ukrainian

12:00

government not to sign a cooperation agreement with the European Union. The film follows the development of the revolution, from the quiet demonstration that drew hundreds of thousands of citizens to the square, and up to the violent street wars between demonstrators and Ukrainian police forces.

In the Spirit of Freedom in Memory of Wim van Leer Cinematheque2

12:15

For Those in Peril

I’m not Him

(UK) Protagonist Pictures, London. 92mins.

Dir: Paul Wright. Key cast: George Mackay, Kate Dickie, Nichola Burley.

Aaron, a young man in a remote fishing community in Scotland, is the sole survivor of a mysterious maritime accident that took the lives of five young people, including his older brother. The members of the community, imbued with local folklore, myths and superstitions, believe he is responsible for the horrible tragedy and turn him into an outcast. Aaron himself refuses to accept his brother’s death, and tries relentlessly to locate his traces and those of the other victims.

(France, Germany, Turkey, Greece) Pascale Ramonda, Paris. 124mins.

Dir: Tayfun Pirselimoglu.

Key cast: Ercan Kesal, Maryam Zaree.

Lonely middle-aged Nihat is a sworn bachelor who works in a hospital kitchen. When his beautiful co-worker Ayse invites him to dinner at her place, he acquiesces, despite rumours she is married and that her husband is serving time for serious crimes. During the visit he notices the couple’s wedding picture and remarks the striking physical resemblance between himself and the jailed husband. So begins an odd but dizzying relationship, and Nihat’s life changes beyond recognition.

Debuts Competition Cinematheque2

Panorama Cinematheque1

n 16 Screen International at Jerusalem July 15-16, 2014

12:30 The 50 Year Argument

(US) 97min. 97min. Dir: Martin Scorsese, David Tedeschi. Key cast: with: Noam Chomsky, Michael Chabon, Norman Mailer.

Rides the waves of literary, political and cultural history as charted by its subject; the influential publication “The New York Review Of Books”.

America’s leading journal of ideas for more than 50 years, this provocative film explores the power of these ideas in shaping history.

Masters Cinematheque3

Regarding Susan Sontag

(US) Nancy Kates, Berkeley. 100min.

Dir: Nancy Kates.

Susan Sontag loved to observe. Thanks to her philosophical-literaryphotographic-cinematicpolitical-feminist contributions — and perhaps also because she was never afraid to express her views in public — she was one of the most outstanding and most influential cultural icons of the 20th century. Now, her own life is the object of observation.

Int. Documentaries Lev Smadar

13:45 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 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?

beginning of the film — does her nephew discover the pages containing memories of the little house — the home where she worked for years as a servant of the wealthy Hirai family in Tokyo.

From here, the film returns to the years before and during the Second World War. Young, shy Taki is particularly devoted to Tokiko, the lady of the house who is independent and educated. She describes the friendship between Tokiko and Itakura, a young man employed by Tokiko’s husband. But when this friendship appears to be developing into a love affair, the bashful servant intervenes to save the family life of her beloved mistress.

Masters Lev Smadar

14:45 The Wall

Debuts Competition

(Austria, Germany) Match Factory, Cologne.

108min. Dir: Julian Roman Polsler. Key cast: Martina Gedeck.

The call of the crows is heard outside, in the freezing cold. Inside a log cabin sits a woman, furiously writing densely packed lines on her last piece of paper. She is not writing her story out of an artistic calling, but in order not to lose her sanity.

It all begins as she joins a pair of friends on holiday at a hunting cabin. After the friends go for a visit to a neighbouring village and don’t return, she sets out towards the village and runs into something inexplicable: a transparent wall standing between her and the world. Now she must try to survive alone in the forest, and writing is her only refuge from the horrific loneliness.

Cinematheque2

JFF Special

Int. Documentaries Cinematheque4

White Shadow

(Germany, Italy, Tanzania) 117min. Dir: Noaz Deshe. Key cast: Hamisi Bazili, James Gayo, Salum Abdallah.

14:30 The Little House

(Japan) Shochiku, Tokyo.

136min. Dir: Yoji Yamada.

Key cast: Takako Matsu, Haru Kuroki, Takataro Kataoka.

Taki kept the big secret for 60 years. She never married nor had children and only after her death — which occurs at the

Cinematheque1

15:00 Night Moves

(US) Match Factory, Cologne. 112mins. Dir: Kelly Reichardt. Key cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Dakota Fanning, Peter Sarsgaard.

Three environmentalists decide to pull off the biggest protest of their life: blowing up a hydraulic

dam, which symbolises for them industrial culture and its devouring of resources and killing off of every source of natural energy. Harmon is a former marine, a hopeless adrenaline-seeker; Dena is a high-society drop-out; and Josh is a middle class guy who works on an organic farm. A thriller that poses questions about the implications of political extremism, and asks, among other things, when the situation around us requires breaking the law.

the clerks — all, needless to say, of Ashkenazi background — leave him empty-handed. Things are further complicated when Sallah discovers the love story between his beautiful daughter Habuba and a young Kibbutznik.

Classics Cinematheque2

19:00 The Amazing Catfish

Gala cinema city 11

15:45 Because I Was a Painter

(France, Germany) Jour2fete, Paris. 104min.

Dir: Christophe Cognet.

Key cast: with: ehuda 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.

The Jewish Experience

Wednesday July 16 19:15 The Unwelcoming

(Israel) Fig Films.

73min. Dir: Robby Elmaliah.

In 2006, Kmimish Uzan decided to emigrate from Djerba (an island off the coast of Tunisia), to Israel with his wife and five children. The Uzan family arrived at the most natural place, Moshav Beit HaGadi, populated primarily by immigrants from Djerba who arrived during the 1950s. Except that upon their arrival, the reality of the new country hit them between the eyes, as the inhabitants of the Moshav sought to drive them out of their home for being “primitive and

uncivilised”. The film recounts the story of Kmimish, who wishes to earn an honest living in Israel by building a sheep pen. Kmimish rallies the entire family around this mission, though this act exposes the tension between the children, who seek to integrate into the new country, and the father, who feels that he has lost his honour. The many obstacles the family face leave them with two solutions: remaining in Israel and fighting for their home; or returning to their homeland in Tunisia.

The Van Leer Awards for Israeli Cinema — Documentary Film Cinematheque3

Cinematheque4

16:15 George Griffin’s Films

(US) 87min. Dir: George Griffin.

George Griffin, a New York animator and filmmaker, is one of the most outstanding creative forces on the indie scene in the US. Since 1969, he has created more than 30 films ranging in length from one minute to half an hour.

He has taught at Harvard, the Pratt Institute and Parsons, has presented his work (included in the MOMA’s permanent collection) at a long line of festivals, museums and cinematic institutions, and has published articles

and reviews in a variety of magazines and journals.

This year, as a guest of the Jerusalem Film Festival, he presents a programme of films created between 1975 and 2012.

Intersections: George Griffin Films Cinematheque2

16:45 That Lovely Girl

(Israel) Transfax, Tel Aviv. 95min. Dir: Keren Yedaya. Key cast: Maayan Turjeman, Tzahi Grad, Yael Abecassis.

The Haggiag Awards for Israeli Cinema — Full Length Films Cinematheque3

17:00 Being John Malkovich

(US) Globus Group, Neve Ilan. 112min. Dir: Spike Jonze. Key cast: John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, Ned Bellamy, Catherine Keener.

Puppeteer Craig Schwartz and his wife Lotte, a petstore owner, love their jobs but can’t seem to make a living. Since “nobody’s looking for a puppeteer in today’s wintry economic climate”, Craig finds a job that suits his quick fingers: a filing position in an office with a low ceiling. But between the mountains of bureaucracy, Craig makes

two discoveries: the first is Maxine, a cold executive who makes his heart skip a beat; the second is a portal leading straight into the mind of movie-star John Malkovich.

JFF Special Cinematheque1

17:15 Natural Sciences

(France, Argentina) Urban Distribution International, Paris.

71min. Dir: Matias Lucchesi. Key cast: Paula Hertzog, Paola Barrientos, Alvin Astorga.

We first meet 12-year-old Lila as she scrapes a piece of rusty metal from an old electrical pole and rides a horse towards the remote boarding school where she lives. After that we see repeated attempts by the girl to run away from the school and find out the identity of her father, with the piece of metal as her only clue. Lila’s mother shows little interest in the girl, but a kind teacher agrees to go with her in search of the father, a journey that turns out to be longer than expected.

Panorama Lev Smadar

17:30 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 cinema city 11

17:45 Rohmer in Paris

(France, UK) Pascale Ramonda, Paris. 67min.

Dir: Richard Misek.

Richard Misek’s documentary is a love letter to the legendary French New Wave director Eric Rohmer, and to Paris, the world capital of cinema.

(France, Mexico) Pyramide, Paris. 89min.

Dir: Claudia Sainte-Luce.

Key cast: Ximena Ayala, Lisa Owen, Sonia Franco.

Twenty-two-year-old Claudia lives alone and works as a product demonstrator at a supermarket. One day, after feeling sharp stomach pains, she winds up in the hospital with an acute case of appendicitis. She wakes up after her operation to meet her roommate Martha, a warmhearted single mother of four. The two women are released from the hospital at the same time and the fast friendship brings Claudia for a visit at Martha’s house, where Claudia discovers family life for the first time. While Martha’s health continues to decline, Claudia’s bond with the members of the household grows stronger and she becomes an integral part of the small and colourful tribe.

Debuts Competition Lev Smadar

19:15

Cinemania

The Unwelcoming

Cinematheque4

See box, left

18:15

19:30

Sallah Shabati

(Israel) United King, Ramat Hasharon.

110min. Dir: Ephraim Kishon. Key cast: Haym Topol, Geula Noni, Gila Almagor.

Sallah Shabati lands at Israel’s airport with his wife and seven children (or was it eight?), and from there they go straight to an immigrant camp.

Sallah adapts quickly to life there, using his cunning to outsmart the bureaucrats charged with his “absorption.”.

When he asks to move to an apartment building,

The Airstrip — Decampment of Modernism, Part III

(Germany) Filmgalerie 451, Berlin. 108min. Dir: Heinz Emigholz.

Imagine an airspace into which a bomb has been dropped. The bomb has not reached the site of its detonation, but there is no way to stop its speedy approach. The time between the bomb’s release and its explosion is neither the future nor the past. The flight time of the bomb so describes absolute nothingness, consisting of all the possibilities that »

July 15-16, 2014 Screen International at Jerusalem 17 n

SCREENINGS

in just a moment will no longer exist. This story will end before it has begun; here it is told in defiance.

carry out challenges on a desert island, intensifying the tension between the old world and today’s digital reality.

Carte Blanche Cinematheque4

Panorama Cinematheque1

19:45

22:30

The Rover

(US, Australia) Lev Cinema, Tel Aviv. 102min.

Dir: David Michod. Key cast: Guy Pearce, Robert Pattinson, Scoot McNairy.

Three delinquents on the run steal a car. But Eric, the car owner, refuses to give in and a wild chase ensues.

In this post-apocalyptic era, following the disappearance of state institutions, in the heart of a burning and sparsely populated desert, Eric locates the fourth gang member and forces him to join the chase, hoping that the confused and wounded guy will lead him to his goal.

Gala Cinema City 11

20:00 Self Made See box, right

20:45 Vessel

(US, Portugal, Spain, Poland, Tanzania) Cinephil, Tel Aviv. 90min.

Dir: Diana Whitten.

Rebecca Gomperts is a socially active physician who founded the Women on Waves organisation, which operates a ship that enables women around the world to have abortions when the laws in their countries forbid it.

In the Spirit of Freedom in Memory of Wim van Leer Cinematheque2

21:00 Club Sandwich

(Mexico) Funny Balloons, Paris. 82mins. Dir: Fernando Eimbcke.

Key cast: Maria Renee Prudencio, Lucio Gimenez Cacho, Danae Reynaud Romero.

Paloma and Hector have a very special relationship.

She’s 35 and he’s 15. She’s his mother and he is her son. On vacation at a seaside hotel, Hector meets a girl and for the first time begins to discover the world of romantic love and sexuality.

Panorama Lev Smadar

Wednesday July 16 20:00 Self Made

(Israel) MoviePlus Productions; United King Films. 89min.

Dir: Shira Geffen.

Key cast: Sarah Adler, Samira Saraya.

Michal is a renowned Jerusalem artist. One morning, her bed breaks, she falls and consequently loses her memory. She orders a new bed and discovers that a screw is missing. She complains to the furniture factory, leading to the dismissal of Nadine, a young Palestinian woman, who

The Decent One

(Israel, Austria) Realworks. 96min.

On May 6, 1945, US Army soldiers occupied the Himmler family residence, where they discovered hundreds of private letters, documents, diaries, and photographs. The film makes use of these materials to expose the inner mind, ideals, plans and secrets of the Architect of the Final Solution, SS Commander in Chief, Heinrich Himmler.

The Van Leer Awards for Israeli Cinema — Documentary Film Cinematheque3

22:00 Anatomy of a Paper Clip

(Japanese) Pia Film Festival, Tokyo. 99mins.

Dir: Ikeda Akira. Key cast: Sakae Tomomatsu, Kazutoshi Kato, Yukari Hara, Toshiyuki

n 18 Screen International at Jerusalem July 15-16, 2014

works packing screws into plastic bags. This event signals a point of no return for both women until their fates cross again at a border checkpoint. A soldier’s mistake sends Michal to Nadine’s refugee camp and Nadine to Michal’s home in Jerusalem. The switch leads them to discover their innermost desires, the ones they could not access in their previous lives.

The Haggiag Awards for Israeli Cinema — Full Length Films Cinematheque1

Takahashi, Akiko An. Kogura is a lonesome bachelor who works as a paperclip bender in a small paperclip factory. In his dreary day-to-day job, he has to contend with a cruel boss and with a pair of bullies who stalk him on the street and steal his clothing.

One day a butterfly appears in his small apartment. He sets it free and the next day it reappears, this time in the form of a woman who speaks an unintelligible language and consumes undistinguishable food.

Carte Blanche Cinematheque4

Frank

(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 — avant-garde 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.

Other band members are grouchy Clara, Nana the drummer and Baraquethe the bass player. Into this madness enters Jon, a young wannabe musician.

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 cinema city 11

The Wonders

(Germany, Italy, Switzerland) Match Factory, Cologne. 110min.

Dir: Alice Rohrwacher.

Key cast: Maria Alexandra Lungu, Sam Louwyck, Monica Bellucci.

Teenage Gelsomina is growing up with her sisters in a chaotic family that earns its living from beekeeping and honey production. She comes across as the most responsible person in the family and the natural successor to the family business. Despite her conservative father, she convinces the family to compete for a large cash prize on a reality show with a Felliniesque hostess.

The children are sent to

The Jerusalem Press club, Mishkanot Sha’ananim St, Jerusalem, Israel Editor

Moebius

Wendy Mitchell, wendy.

(South Korea) Finecut, Seoul. 89mins. Dir: Kim Ki-Duk. Key cast: Cho Jae-hyun, Seo Young-ju, Lee Eun-woo.

A betrayed woman threatens her husband with revenge while their teenage son is busy with web pornography and comics. When she fails in her attempt to stab her husband, she takes out her vengeance on the son, cuts off his penis with a knife, and escapes into the night.

From here, the macabre plot moves into even wilder territory such that even sworn fans of South Korean master Kim Ki-Duc will find it difficult to remain indifferent: purchase of human organs via internet, gang rape, extreme forms of sexual gratification and other examples of sadism and misogyny.

mitchell@screendaily.com,

Masters Cinematheque2

23:00 The Desert

(Argentina) Subterranea Films, Buenos Aires.

98min. Dir: Christoph Behl. Key cast: Lautaro Delgado, Victoria Almeida, William Prociuk.

Axel, Jonathan and Ana live together in a threatening post-apocalyptic reality, with a zombie-infested landscape that can just barely be seen from their fortified balcony. Now Ana and Jonathan are in a romantic relationship, and Axel is wallowing in his loneliness — filling his body from head to toe with fly tattoos. In order to deal with their hellish reality, the occasionally go into the “treatment room”, where they confess to a camera about their feelings.

Everything begins to change when Axel and Jonathan go out to search for food and drink, and return to the house with a zombie whom they name Pythagoras.

Into the Night Cinematheque3

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