The NFCT would like to congratulate the filmmakers of 17 NFCT-supported films that will premiere at the upcoming Docaviv IFF and is proud to be part of the success of Israeli documentary filmmaking.

Good luck!

 May 23-June 1, 2019 at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque and other venues across Tel Aviv

 

Israel Competition

 

Picture of His Life

Directors: Yonatan Nir, Dani Menkin // Producers: Yonatan Nir, Dani Menkin, Nancy Spileberg, Ori Eisen, Mirit Eisen, Roger Fishman

The film follows the journey award-winning nature photographer Amos Nachum takes in pursuit of the one photo he has yet to achieve – swimming underwater with a polar bear and capturing it face-to-face on film.

 

Screening times:

Thursday May 23 – 5:00pm
Thursday May 30 – 3:15pm
Saturday June 1 – 10:00am

 

Leftover Women

Directors and Producers: Shosh Shlam, Hilla Medalia

The film follows three successful Chinese women who despite their thriving careers still live with the derogatory label: Leftover Women – a term used in China to describe educated, professional women in their mid-20s who are not married.

 

Screening times:

Monday May 27 – 9:15pm
Thursday May 30 – 10:05am
Saturday June 1 – 4:15pm

 

Chasing Yehoshua

Director: Shay Fogelman // Producer: Assaf Amir

Shay Fogelman, reporter for Haaretz Newspaper, investigates the story of Yehoshua – a West Bank settler, who shot a Palestinian taxi driver and is being accused of manslaughter. He is put under house arrest to await his verdict, but on the day of the verdict, he never shows up.

Screening times:

Sunday May 26 – 6:45pm
Friday May 31 – 5:15pm

 

Kosher Beach

Director: Karin Kainer // Producers: Levi Zini, Karin Kainer, Avishai Peretz

It is only a half hour drive from Bnei-Brak, a closed Orthodox city, to Tel Aviv’s shore. But for the women going there it’s light years away. “The Kosher Beach” is a gated and secluded 100 meter-long strip of beach with dedicated days for women and men to bath separately, only a wooden fence separates between the freedom of the gay beach and them.

Screening times:

Tuesday May 28 – 6:30pm
Friday May 31 – 10:00am

 

A Whore Like Me

Directors: Yael Shachar, Sharon Yaish // Producers: Haggai Arad, Elad Peleg

When Chile was 22, she was kidnapped from a pub in Hungary and sold to a group of Israelis who trafficked for prostitution. Today, twenty years later, Chile is a different woman, one who has managed to get out of the drug abuse cycle, celebrating 10 years of sobriety, and volunteering at the Levinsky Clinic to try and help women on the street. When the Ministry of Interior in Israel refuses to give Chile a resident certificate and to believe that she is a victim of trafficking in women, she goes looking for her kidnappers to obtain proof.

Screening times:

Sunday May 26 – 9:00pm
Saturday June 1 – 7:15pm

 

 Mussolini’s Sister

Director: Juna Sulieman // Producers: Laura Samara Hawa, Juna Sulieman, Nicholas Jacob – Co Producer, Ahlam Canaan – Co Producer

Unable to accept her slow and meaningless death, Hiam Jarjoura (85), a perpetual housewife and a hopelessly devoted mother – resorts to unexpected encounters with her own past, and a gradual flirt with death, all of which lead her to look for light in a world that she so detests.

Screening times:

Saturday May 25 – 2:15pm
Sunday May 26 – 7:15pm

 

Comrade Dov

Director and Producer: Barak Heymann

Goddamned communist. Internal enemy. Privileged Tel Aviv Ashkenazi.
It seems Dov Khenin has been called almost everything during his 13-year tenure as Member of Knesset for the Jewish-Arab party ‘Hadash’. Comrade Dov is a surprising, thought-provoking portrait of a unique politician, who refuses to give up even as reality deals him one cruel blow after another.

 

 

Screening times:

Saturday May 25 – 8:30pm
Wednesday May 29 – 2:15pm
Saturday June 1 – 5:45pm

 

The Rabbi from Hezbollah

Director: Itamar Chen // Producers: Yoav Roeh, Aurit Zamir
(support for development stage)

Ibrahim Yassin was born in a small village in Lebanon and was destined to follow in his father’s footsteps as a farmer and shepherd, but fate had something else in store. The film sketches an intimate portrait of a man who through tribulations, coincidence and choice became one of Israel’s leading spies.

Screening times:

Thursday May 23 – 9:45pm
Friday May 31 – 11:45am

 

 

 

Student Film Competition

 

Phantom Chairs

Director: Maya Klar // Producers: Uri Yerushalmi, Jessica Krecisz | The Steve Tisch School of Film

In a luxurious furniture store in the small town of Weimar, human beings are trying out Bauhaus chairs. In-between customers, signs of life re-emerge from the past.

 

 

Screening times:

Thursday May 23 – 3:30pm – Student Competition 2 – Free entry
Monday May 27 – 7:45pm –

Bauhaus, That Which Remains

 

 

 

Corridor

Director: Neta Shaked // Producer: Shmueli Cohen | Jerusalem Sam Spiegel Film School

A peek down the corridors of a Jerusalem funeral home. This rare look at an unknown territory follows one cadaver as it arrives at the funeral home, and the rituals that ensue.

 

Screening times:

Thursday May 23 – 3:30pm – Student Competition 2 – Free entry

 

 

 

 Panorama

 

Open Your Mouth

Director: Tamara Mamon // Producer: Assaf Amir

Omar, Muhammad and Yazan are three 12-year-olds from Lod. The boys are in their last year of elementary school, beginning to confront the challenges of life. Ella, a Jewish woman who emigrated from the former Soviet Union founds a choir in their school and invites them to a safe and fantastic environment that will challenge the stark reality awaiting beyond the classroom walls

Screening times:

Tuesday May 28 – 9:30pm
Saturday June 1 – 4:00pm

 

The Ashram Children: I am No Body, I have No Body

Director: Jonathan Ofek // Producers: Jonathan Ofek, Itamar Luria

For 20 years, Jonathan, the filmmaker grew up in Jerusalem and in an Ashram in India, which he had to keep secret. 20 years (and a lot of therapy) later, the director sets on a journey to understand the secret he was forced to keep about India throughout his entire life, the effect it has on him even now.

Screening times:

Wednesday May 29 – 7:45pm
Saturday June 1 – 2:15pm

 

The Little Things

Director: Michal Aronzon // Producers: Adi Bar Yossef, Michal Aronzon, Co-Producer: Astar Goldberg

The film follows Yudale, a religious youth from the settlements, as he experiences a crisis of faith. As he receives a camera from Michal, a Tel Aviv director who teaches him how to film,
Yehuda documents his life on the line between the settlement Tko’a and Tel Aviv: his final conversations with his dying father—Rabbi Menachem Fruman– their joint study, and saying goodbye to him. When his father dies, Yehuda chooses to take off his kippah.

Screening times:

Saturday May 25 – 2:15pm
Sunday May 26 – 7:15pm

 

 Golda

Directors: Sagi Bornstein, Udi Nir, Shani Rozanes // Producers: Sagi Bornstein, Udi Nir, Georg Tschurtschenthaler, Christian Beetz

Based on these never-before seen materials, testimonies of supporters and opponents and rare archival footage, GOLDA tells the story of Golda Meir’s dramatic premiership – from her surprising rise to power and iconic international stature as “queen of the Jewish people”, to her tragic and lonely demise.

Screening times:

Saturday May 25 – 4:15pm
Wednesday May 29 – 12:00pm
Friday May 31 – 12:30pm

 

 

We Were the Others

Director: Hadas Ayalon // Producers: Amir Harel, Ayelet Kait

(support in the development stage through the Visiting Card Program)

The film tells the story of six Gay men that were born in the days of the establishment of the State of Israel. Their stories serve as the film’s background for the depiction of the clandestine and undocumented lives of homosexuals in Israel during the 1960-70s

Screening times:

Thursday May 23 – 9:30pm
Friday May 31 – 2:00pm

 

 

Arts and Culture

 

Levantine

Director: Rafael Balulu // Producer: Yair Qedar

She lived in Cairo, Paris and New York, but died in an old age home in Givatayim. She was admired and beautiful, but only few knew her during her life and even less after she had passed away. Director Rafael Balulu traces the footsteps of Levantine thinker and author Jacqueline Kahanoff and not only draws a portrait of this impressive thinker, but also discovers the fate of Levantine identity in Israel as a cultural option for pride and and honor.

Screening times:

Wednesday May 29 – 8:30pm at Bialik Square – Free Entry!
Friday May 31 – 12:15pm

 

We, People of Siemensstadt

Director: Ofir Feldman // Producers: Uri Yerushalmi, Jessica Krecisz | The Steve Tisch School Of Film & Tv Tel Aviv University

Three characters produce a portrait of the Siemens workers’ neighborhood in Berlin, which became an open museum of the International Style buildings. Their stories of detachment reveal the transformation of the German working class family within the utopian habitat for which it was created.

Screening times:

Monday May 27 – 7:45pm –

Bauhaus, That Which Remains