Festival:
The 34th Jerusalem Film Festival
Dates:
July 13-23
About:
Approximately 100 new and recent features screen at the Israeli event, with a third representing nonfiction work.
Seven new Israeli docs appear in the Documentary Competition: Anat Yuta Zuria and Shira Clara Winther’s CONVENTIONAL SINS (pictured), which follows a man’s efforts to reckon with the sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of ultraorthodox pedophiles when a boy; Yair Agmon’s RACHEL AGMON, in which the filmmaker seeks answers to his unlikely conception; Tal Haim Yofee’s A13901, a portrait of two Holocaust survivors and their Filipino caretaker; Rana Abu Fraiha’s IN HER FOOTSTEPS, in which the filmmaker explores her Muslim mother’s wish to be buried in a Jewish town; Neta Shoshani’s BORN IN DEIR YASSIN, about an Arab village converted into a Jewish mental hospital; Ran Tal’s THE MUSEUM, an institutional portrait of the Israel Museum; and Amos Gitai’s WEST OF THE JORDAN RIVER, following the acclaimed director back to the Occupied Territories for the first time since 1982.
Among the remaining nonfiction at the festival is: Noit Geva’s CUT TO THE CHASE (pictured), a film clip compilation about Israeli masculinity; Claude Lanzmann’s NAPALM, in which the documentary master revisits a transformative visit to North Korea; the late Abbas Kiarostami’s 24 FRAMES, a hybrid meditation on capturing images; Thierry Frémaux’s LUMIÈRE!, a celebration of the cinema pioneers by Cannes’ artistic director; and Sonia Kronlund’s THE PRINCE OF NOTHINGWOOD, about Afghanistan’s most prolific B-movie director.
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