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LEMON TREE: Q&A with Eran Riklis

Based on actual events, Eran Riklis‘ Lemon Tree (no connection to Sandy Tolan’s novel The Lemon Tree), which opens today in the Los Angeles area, chronicles a Palestinian widow’s fight to prevent the Israeli army from razing her lemon grove. The problem is that all those lemon trees are located right next door to the brand new house — actually, "fortress" would be a better description — of the Israeli minister of defense. Security agents have deemed the grove a potential hide-out for terrorists, who could then fire rockets right onto the minister’s dining table.
Sounds like a political film? Well, sure. Lemon Tree is definitely political. (The real-life case was that of defense minister Shaul Mofaz and his [...]

LEMON TREE: Q&A with Eran Riklis Part II

LEMON TREE: Q&A with Eran Riklis Part I
Along those lines, the men in charge in Lemon Tree don’t come across in a very positive light. A bossy male security agent demands the destruction of the lemon grove. A bossy Palestinian man threatens Salma because of her relationship with her lawyer. The defense minister is obsessed with his career and may be having an affair with an assistant. The Palestinian lawyer himself seems to be as interested in advancing his career as in helping Salma, even though he actually cares for her.
The two women, however, are both admirable characters. Was that a conscious decision, to make the women “stronger” — in their [...]

Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival 2009

The 4th Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival, which runs April 23-30, will kick off with a screening of Joshua Sinclair’s Jump, starring Ben Silverstone (of the coming-of-age gay drama Get Real) and Patrick Swayze.
Jump will screen on Thursday, April 23, at 8:00 pm at the Writers Guild Theater in Beverly Hills. Based on a real story, the film (co-written by Sinclair and Ryan James) follows the biased murder trial of the young Jew and future celebrity portrait photographer Philippe Halsman (Silverstone), who was accused of murdering his father in late 1920s Austria. Swayze plays the young man’s Jewish attorney.
Also in the Jump cast: Martine McCutcheon, and veterans Stefanie Powers, Richard Johnson, and Sybil [...]

ANTARCTICA: Q&A with Yair Hochner

In writer-director Yair Hochner’s intriguing, multi-layered, remarkably well-acted Antarctica, which Regent Releasing is opening tomorrow, November 14, at the Regent Showcase in Hollywood, several gay men and a couple of lesbians get enmeshed in a complex web of sexual/romantic entanglements set in the streets, clubs, and apartment houses of Tel Aviv.
There’s Omer (Tomer Ilan), a handsome, soft-spoken — and still single — librarian who’s about to turn thirty; his sister, Shirley (Lucy Dubinchik), who feels the need to get away from it all despite her love for club owner Michal (Liat Ekta), who also happens to be madly in love with the younger woman; the journalist Ronen (Guy Zo-Aretz), who has recently returned from London to Tel Aviv [...]

Jerusalem Film Festival Awards 2008

2008 Jerusalem Film Festival Awards
2008 Jerusalem Film Festival: July 10–19
 

Ronit Elbabetz and Shlomi Elkabetz’s 7 Days: "One of the brothers of the Ohaion family dies. It is a large family. According to the tradition, the period of mourning begins after the funeral: the entire family goes to the home of the deceased, and nobody can leave for seven days. One must dedicate oneself to prayer for the soul of the deceased and tell him goodbye. Over the course of the week, they will sleep together on slim mattresses, eat light food, and go without shaving, taking a shower, or even changing clothes. The mourners are the six brothers, the two sisters, the spouse and her two children, as well [...]

JELLYFISH: Q&A with Etgar Keret

I caught Jellyfish (Meduzot in Hebrew), which opens in New York tomorrow and in Los Angeles on April 25, at the 2007 AFI FEST.
What I liked best about this quirky look at several Tel Aviv denizens was the humorous, naturalistic touch of husband-and-wife team of writers-turned-filmmakers Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen (above).
Without any fanfare, throughout the film’s relatively brief (78 minutes) but multifaceted narrative, Keret and Geffen show us that people in the big city (or, for that matter, in this big world of ours) may lead separate lives but on a deeper level they’re all somehow connected. One person’s poem, for instance, may be another’s suicide note.
There’s nothing even remotely affected in the development of the distinct [...]

THE BAND’S VISIT Disqualified for the Oscars

Israel’s submission for the best foreign-language film Academy Award, Eran Kolirin’s The Band’s Visit, has been disqualified for the 2007 Oscar in that category because more than half of the film’s dialogue is in English.
As the Israeli Academy’s best film winner, The Band’s Visit was automatically selected as Israel’s Oscar entry. According to Miriam A. Shaviv in The Jerusalem Post, the Israeli Academy has appealed the rejection but it appears that Joseph Cedar’s Beaufort, the Academy’s best film runner-up, will become Israel’s official entry.
"The real question is why this situation came to pass at all," says Shaviv. "There are clear rules posted on the Oscar Web site that insist that nominated foreign language films appear ‘predominantly’ in the primary language [...]

Israeli Film Academy’s 2007 Ophir Awards

Israeli Film Academy Awards – Ophir 2007
The winners of the 2007 Ophir Awards were announced on Sept. 20, 2007.
("*" denotes the winner in each category)

Despite stiff competition, Eran Kolirin’s The Band’s Visit, the tale of an Egyptian brass band stranded in a small Israeli town, won a total of eight Ophir Awards, including best film and best director. The best film win automatically made The Band’s Visit Israel’s official entry for the best foreign-language film Academy Award. One problem with that choice, however, is that much of the film’s dialogue — possibly more than 50% — is in English. If so, that would render The Band’s Visit ineligible in the best foreign-language film category.
At the Ophir ceremony, the film’s [...]

Jerusalem Film Festival Awards 2007

2007 Jerusalem Film Festival Awards
2007 Jerusalem Film Festival: July 5–14
 

In Eran Kolirin’s The Band’s Visit, an Egyptian police band gets stranded in a small Israeli town.
 
The Wolgin Award – Best Israeli Feature:
The Band’s Visit directed by Eran Kolirin

Special Jury Prize:
Vasermil directed by Mushon Salmona

The Wolgin Award – Best Israeli Documentary:
Children of the Sun directed by Ran Tal

Special Mention:
Citizen Nawi (above) by Nissim Mossek
A Fool’s Dream by Dan Syrkin, Ido Bahat
Best Short Film:
Roads directed by Lior Geller
Special Mention:
Ketem by Alla Sheraeir
Pathways by Hagar Ben Asher
Drama Award in Memory of Anat Pirchi
Reds by Amir Manor

In The Spirit of Freedom Award – Best Feature Film:
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud

In [...]

Cannes 2007 Tidbits

Thomas Sotinel reviews Raphaël Nadjari’s (above] Tehilim in Le Monde:
"The decapitated family is a representation of Israeli society, the disappearance of the father symbolizing the traumas that the country has endured since its creation … Nevertheless, Tehilim doesn’t see itself as an allegory waiting to be deciphered, but as a heart-rending tale of a forced and brutal passage into adulthood."
 
Liam Lacey’s "Judging the Jury" at the Toronto Globe and Mail:
"As [Sarah] Polley told reporters today at the annual meet-the-jury press conference, she didn’t hesitate to say yes when Cannes asked her [to be a member of the official competition jury]. The idea of seeing a lot of great films, wining and dining, staying in Cannes and talking about movies with [...]

HOT HOUSE d: Shimon Dotan

Hot House (2006)
Direction and screenplay: Shimon Dotan
 

When Hot House was shown as part of the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival in London, it was received by the audience in stunned silence. The chilling reality the film portrayed made it almost impossible for us to extricate ourselves from its powerful message — there was too much to think about; we could not drag ourselves back easily into our world of banal complacency.
Written and directed by Shimon Dotan, and produced by Arik Berbstein, Jonathan Aroch, Dikla Barkal, and Shimon Dotan, Hot House presents a number of Palestinian male and female inmates in the Ber Sheba, Ashkelon, Hadarim, and Megiddo prisons in Israel. These inmates face the camera with [...]

15 Documentaries Vying for Oscar Nod

Among the 15 documentaries vying for the 2007 Oscar are Davis Guggenheim’s An Inconvenient Truth, Lucy Walker’s Blindsight, Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg’s The Trials of Darryl Hunt, James Longley’s Iraq in Fragments, Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck’s Shut Up and Sing, Amy Berg’s Deliver Us from Evil, and Frank Popper’s Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore?

Oscar 2007: BORDER CAFE and SWEET MUD Submitted

Kambuzia Partovi’s Café Transit / Border Café, the story of an Iranian widow who encounters a number of social and personal obstacles once she begins managing her late husband’s roadhouse (a practice forbidden in Iran), has been chosen as the Iranian entry for the 2006 Best Foreign-Language Film Academy Award. The film’s star, Fereshteh Sadr-Orafaii won the Best Actress Award at the 9th Iran Cinema Celebration last year.
According to Payvand, Border Café was selected from among three other films, Asghar Farhadi’s Chaharshanbeh-Suri, Bahman Farmanara’s A Little Kiss, and Maziar Miri’s Slowly.

The Israeli Academy of Film and Television has submitted Adama Meshuga’at / Sweet Mud, co-winner of Israel’s 2006 Ophir Awards, as the Israeli entry for the Oscars. The [...]

Israeli Film Academy Awards 2006

2006 Israeli Film Academy Ophir Awards
2006 Ophir nominees: Aug. 22, 2006
2006 Ophir winners: Tel Aviv Opera House on Sept. 14, 2006
("*" denotes the winner in each category)
 

The winners of the Israeli Academy of Film and Television’s 2006 Ophir Awards, the Israeli equivalent to the Oscars, were announced yesterday at a ceremony in Tel Aviv.
For the first time, two films tied for the top prize: the odds-on favorite Aviva Ahuvati / Aviva My Love, which also won the Best Director (Shemi Zarhin) and Best Screenplay (Itzik Portal) awards, unexpectedly shared the Best Film award with Dror Shaul’s coming-of-age tale Adama Meshuga’at / Sweet Mud, about a boy growing up in a Kibbutz in the 1970s.
Aviva My Love, the [...]

Jerusalem Film Festival Awards 2006

While bombs were being dropped and rockets were being fired in Lebanon and Israel, the Jerusalem Film Festival came to a close, with most of the festival’s top awards going to films that celebrate tolerance and compassion.
The Wolgin Award for Best Israeli Narrative Feature went to Dror Sabo’s Dead End, a critical look at TV exploitation and sensationalism. The Drama Award was shared by Jony Arbid for directing Ringo & Taher, the tale of an Arab boy who develops a strong emotional bond with a puppy he raises in the streets of his poor Haifa neighborhood, and Sharon Maymon and Tal Granit for their direction of Mortgage, a comedy-drama about a young couple who resort to extreme measures in order [...]

JOY d: Julie Shles

Muchrachim Lehiyot Same’ach / Joy (2005)
Director: Julie Shles. Screenplay: Omer Tadmor. Cast: Sigalit Fuchs, Tal Friedman, Rivka Michaeli, Alex Sendrowitz
 

Directed by Julie Shles, Muchrachim Lehiyot Same’ach / Joy (Israel) is a modern fairy tale in which magic wands and pumpkin carriages are replaced by the more humanistic magic of empathy and forgiveness.
Set in Tel Aviv around the time of Yom Kippur, Joy follows the struggles of an overweight, homely girl who wants her lonely parents’ former friends — Dad was a major womanizer — present at a televised friends & family reunion. Along the way, she discovers both self-respect and (an unusual) Prince Charming.
Although Shles’ direction and Omer Tadmor’s script meander aimlessly every now and then, they should [...]

WALK ON WATER d: Eytan Fox

Walk on Water (2004)
Direction: Eytan Fox. Screenplay: Gal Uchovsky. Cast: Lior Ashkenazi, Knut Berger, Caroline Peters, Gideon Shemer, Carola Regnier, Hanns Zischler, Yousef ‘Joe’ Sweid
 
REVENGE IS BITTER
Walk on Water is a flawed but intriguing tale of revenge, guilt, and redemption. In the film, a Mossad agent (Lior Ashkenazi) pretends to be a tour guide to a gay German tourist (Knut Berger) in order to find the whereabouts of the tourist’s Nazi grandfather.
Problems with the screenplay — including an unconvincing, neatly tied happy ending — and director Eytan Fox’s overuse of pop tunes in the soundtrack are to a large extent smoothed over by the three leads’ solid performances and by Fox’s intelligent use of weather and locations to [...]

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