Israeli Film: A Reference Guide

A highly successful lawyer realises, after a cardiac warning, that he may have squandered his life when he left his first wife and all the ideals of youth she stood for, to marry a neurotic poet and join the rat race for money & success.

In 1980s, two neighboring families navigate love and loss as their gay sons face different struggles. While one deals with relationship troubles, the other returns home ill and distant, leading to an unexpected connection between them.

An Israeli sports journalist befriends an American basketball pro playing in Israel. Although from very different backgrounds, their love for the game deepens their friendship. Each learns to value the other's culture.

A rabbi's son rebels against his roots and becomes a magician. A woman enters his life and turns his tricks into metaphysical phenomena. The son is forced to choose between love and living up to his father's expectations.

Atalia is a 40-year-old widow who lost her husband in the Six-Day War and lives on a kibbutz with her adolescent daughter. Lonely and feeling outcast, she enters into a forbidden affair with her daughter's classmate, Matti, an idealistic 19-year-old rejected by the army.

Na'ama, Gabriel's lover is gone. His quest for her leads him to the anxious circles to which she belonged and a new love.

Clara, a Polish born Jew, living in Tel Aviv of the 1970's, has her ideas about how people should behave, and runs everybody's life accordingly: her husband, her sisters, their husbands, their children, her brother who lives in London (probably because it was the only way to get away from her...). Whenever something "improper" does happen, Clara's way of handling it is simply to shove it under the carpet and ignore it completely, as if it never happened. 3 basic rules, are, of course: 1. Never marry some one "under" your class (Or the class you think you are). 2. Never become pregnant out of wedlock and 3. No Abortions. As one may expect, everything crumbles when her niece gives her no option, but to break at least one of those rules.

On June 11, 1967, the Six-Day War ended and ceasefire began. Egyptian soldiers Gassan and Haled journey through the Sinai desert to reach the Suez Canal, encountering Israeli soldiers and a news reporter.

This documentary celebrates the pioneering labors of early Jewish settlers in Palestine, recording the technological and agricultural accomplishments of the pioneers and the idea of a socialist Jewish state.

Aya is a woman who, since early childhood, has been driven by her father's ambition to see her become successful. Now she is shooting a film and fragments of dreams ad fantasy alternate with reality.

After the mother's death, the siblings leave the family home and go to Tel Aviv. They both intend to start a new life. They meet the transgender Apolonia, the owner of Bar 51, who offers them help and work.

Composed of two short films. The first one "Spring" (26 minutes) is about a young couple falling in love. Almost dialogue free and shot in an experimental style. The second film "Fall" (46 minutes) is a more traditional comedic love story between a lonely old Jewish-German lady and a lonely old Iraqi Falafel seller.

Two interconnected stories in the 1930s, one set in Berlin, the other in Palestine: Mania Vilbouchevich Shohat (1880-1961), called Tania, a Russian Jew and revolutionary, goes from Minsk to Palestine to live on a collective. She promotes feminism and laments a shift in the men from self-defense to aggression. Her friend, Else Lasker-Schuler (1869-1945), expressionist poet and German Jew, is in Berlin, writing, caring for her son, watching Hitler's movement take power. She goes to Jerusalem and imagines a park for Arab and Jew. Her poems, voiced from within, capture her experience. The film meditates on the violence at the root of Israel's birth: of the Nazis and of the Zionists.

This is a film about the lifes of a few people, living in south Tel-Aviv, and slightly connected to the life of crime. Each of'em has his dreams his complections, his.. beauty. So they form this beautiful idea to steal an icon from a heavy Mafia guy they knew for years, sell it in Paris, and begin a new flashing life of dream-fulfillment. This is one of these movies that you can at the same time call 'art' and also enjoy them.

In Israel's Central Prison, the security officer is corrupt, supplying drugs and stirring the hatred between Jewish and Arab prisoners to his advantage. Uri, in for 12 years for armed robbery, and Issan, in for 50 years for PLO violence, command the respect of their cells. When the Arabs are framed for the murder of a Jewish prisoner and a young inmate commits suicide rather than lie about what happened, Uri and Issan form an unlikely partnership, leading the security block on a strike. Prison officials try to break it. In the background are Uri's daughter and Issan's wife, women of beauty and passion who embody the distance from inside a cell to the outside.

A slapstick comedy lampooning bureaucracy and the madness of everyday life in Israel centers on an escaped lunatic who digs up the streets of Tel-Aviv with a drill.

Benny Furman is a basketball headcoach who can't decide what he realy wants.

Avram, an Hassadic hippie; Hassan, an Arab inventor; and Tex, a nonchalant Jew, with so different backgrounds and characters, share a liberal view about sexuality. In a world abiding by the strict moral derived from the Dybbuk (sacred book), the three men will go through a number of tribulations concerning marriage.

Dina learns that her boyfriend Marco has found precious biblical scrolls but is hurt and marooned in Jordan. She recruits four adventurers to brave the enemy-infested desert and rescue Marco. But greed and betrayal get in their way.

Based on a novel by Lilly Perry Amitai, Blind Man's Bluff takes a bittersweet look at the life of a young Israeli woman. Trying to distance herself from her Holocaust survivor parents and ex-boyfriend, pianist Micki Stav moves out of her parents' house in search of her own identity. She moves into a small apartment but remains caught in a lattice of demanding relationships. Tension increases as Micki tries to succeed in the classical music world. Her eclectic new neighbors, though, introduce her to a new world of desires in which Micki finds the courage to confront her problems and emerge as an independent and mature woman.

Three short stories of life in Tel Aviv; A girl meets a boy in a library and has to decide what to do next; A young husband comes home to meet his wife's boyfriend; A young clerk opens a letter and finds the photograph of an unknown young girl who he then tries to locate.

Based on a true story, Braids tells the tale of So'ad, a 14-year-old Jewish girl imprisoned by the Iraqi government in 1947 for her participation in the Zionist movement.