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Exclusive: Oscar Isaac, Evangeline Lilly, Elliott Gould and Billy Zane will voice the Gidi Dar-directed animated movie Legend of Destruction.

The Ushpizin‘s filmmaker’s latest project has been nine years in the making incorporating a unique visual style with 1,500 original still paintings by David Polonsky and Michael Faust, the artists behind Waltz with Bashir and The Congress. The paintings are edited together to produce an innovative cinematic language, in creating a full-fledged experience of an epic action war film.

The pic is set in 66 Ad, Judea, under Roman rule; a virtual powder keg waiting to explode. Its society is polarized, and there is rampant social injustice and corruption. When the Jews revolt against the Roman Empire, the situation quickly deteriorates into a brutal civil war and the Roman war beast is unleashed to crush the rebellion. The film ends in...

Film won best picture at Israeli Film Academy awards automatically making it Israeli Oscar submission.

Eran Kolirin’s Let It Be Morning will be Israel’s submission to the 2022 Oscars after it won best film at the Israeli Film Academy annual awards, known locally as the Ophirs, on Tuesday (October 5).

The Israeli production unfolds against the backdrop of a Palestinian village situated in Israel close to Jerusalem that is suddenly cut off from the city by an unexplained army roadblock.

Israeli director Kolirin adapted the mainly Arab-language feature from the 2006 novel of the same name by celebrated Palestinian writer Sayed Kashua.

Other contenders include Avi Nesher’s Image Of Victory and Nadav Lapid’s Cannes Jury Prize winner Ahed’s Knee.

Israeli filmmaker Eran Kolirin’s new film Let It Be Morning had a contentious festival launch in Cannes this July after its mainly Palestinian cast led by Alex Bakri, Juna Suleiman and Salim Daw refused to attend the world premiere in Un Certain Regard.

They explained in a collective statement that their non-appearance was aimed at highlighting the “decades-long colonial campaign of ethnic cleansing… against the Palestinian people” and the “latest wave of violence and dispossession.”

Three months later, in an unexpected turn of events,...

This week on “TheWrap-Up,” hosts Sharon Waxman and Lawrence Yee discuss the lack of diversity among the Primetime Emmys acting winners, preview TheGrill 2021 with LA Times executive editor Kevin Merida and executive Casey Wasserman and explore why the casting of “Dear Evan Hansen” Broadway star Ben Platt may hurt the film adaptation’s chances.

Then, an interview from the Toronto International Film Festival with “The Guilty” director Antoine Fuqua and star Jake Gyllenhaal on “The Guilty” and how toxic male rage permeates the new Netflix thriller.

And finally, a chat with Israeli director Gidi Dar on his film “Legend of Destruction” and how it serves as a warning both America’s and Israel’s increasing fractured societies.

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“TheWrap-Up” won the Best Hard News Feature award from the L.A. Press Club in 2021 for the segment “The Complexities Black Journalists Face This Week Covering Protests.

Memento International (“Call Me By Your Name”) has closed a raft of sales on Leah Purcell’s Australian revenge tale “The Drover’s Wife,” and Alex Camilleri’s “Luzzu” which world premiered at SXSW and Sundance.

After selling North American rights to “The Drover’s Wife” to Samuel Goldwyn, Memento has sold “The Drover’s Wife” to the U.K. (Modern Film), Latin America (Encripta), Greece (Spentzos), Bulgaria (Film Vision), Ex Yugoslavia, (Megacom), Indonesia (Pt Falcon) and Airlines (Anuvu). The film is being handled by Roadshow Films in Australia.

A searing Western thriller, the play “The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson” is a reimagining of Henry Lawson’s classic short story “The Drover’s Wife” and an adaptation of Purcell’s successful Australian stage play.

The story is set in 1893, and centers on the heavily pregnant Molly Johnson (Purcell) and her children, who struggle in isolation to survive the harsh Australian...

Memento International (“Call Me By Your Name”) has boarded “Legend of Destruction,” a thought-provoking animated feature by Israeli filmmaker Gidi Dar (“Ushpizin”), produced by Lama Films.

The film’s unique visual style is being created from 1,500 original paintings which are edited and animated together. The paintings and art direction are being handled by David Polonsky and Michael Faust, the artists behind the Oscar-nominated “Waltz With Bashir.”

Dar co-wrote the script with Shuli Rand, a veteran Israeli actor with whom he also collaborated on “Ushpizin” which competed at Tribeca in 2004. On top of having co-written “Legend of Destruction,” Rand is also leading the voice cast.

Set in Jerusalem during the first Jewish–Roman War, “Legend of Destruction” follows an oppressive Roman governor who is driven out of the city by the people. Due to rampant social inequalities, corruption and injustice, secret groups of religious fanatics appear and seek to rebel in the name of God.

The film explores the birth of Israel’s controversial religious political party Shas in the 1980s.

The 35th edition of the Jerusalem Film Festival (Jff) opened on Thursday evening (July 26) with Israeli director Eliran Malka’s debut feature The Unorthodox, exploring the events leading up to the birth of Israel’s controversial religious political party Shas in the 1980s.

Festival director Noa Regev and Jff artistic director Elad Samorzik’s decision to select a picture by a first-time director with a religious background was seen as bold move given the festival’s traditionally secular atmosphere, but it appears to be have paid off.

Jerusalem Film and Television Fund’s animation event The Hop, Skip & A Jump is aiming to grow the city’s fledgling animation scene.

The first edition of a new event aimed at Jerusalem’s nascent animation industry – called The Hop, Skip & A Jump – kicks off on the fringes of Jerusalem Film Festival on July 13. The three-day meeting, comprising mentoring sessions, master-classes and the pitching of 14 new Israeli animation projects, has been put together by Jerusalem Film and Television Fund director Yoram Honig, who says it is the third stage in his fund’s campaign to build an animation industry in Jerusalem.

The first stage was direct investment in Israeli animation features Including Albert Hanan Kaminksi’s Being Solomon [pictured] and Gidi Dar’s Legend Of Destruction which are currently in production (Being Solomon was also part of this year’s Pitch Point event). The second stage was the introduction of a 30% rebate for every dollar spent in Jerusalem...

After six Boro Park, N.Y., sex- and age-segregated auditorium screenings of Gidi Dar's religious comedy Ushpizin for the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community pulled in about $17,000 three weeks ago, the film rolls into an 800-seat Monsey, N.Y., auditorium at the Atrium Plaza Grand Ballroom this weekend for seven screenings. It will have four more at the Jewish Children's Museum in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Dec. 3 and 10, a run Picturehouse president Bob Berney hopes to extend. Plans for a monthlong run in a Boro Park storefront are in the works, Berney said.

• Ioncinema.com’s Justin Ambrosino sat down with Gidi Dar director of Ushpizin, Gidi’s second feature length film as director. There is no doubt that Ushpizin is an ultra-Orthodox Jewish film, it could be easily be considered a propaganda piece, missionary work, but only because it was written by a believer, Shuli Rand, who must never break the commandments and must always speak the word of God. But what is important here is that it is also directed by someone outside of the religion who is fascinated with the mind of a believer and his name is Gidi Dar. Ushpizin is a film that enters into this particular Jewish religious sect whose members don’t even watch movies for it can be seen as blasphemous, again because of the commandments state thou shall not worship any other Gods, and to an ultra-Orthodox Jew this even means a depiction

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